David Sinton
David Sinton, so widely known for his benefactions, was born in County Armagh, Ireland, early in the century of Scotch and Anglo-Saxon blood: the family name was originally Swinton. His father’s family came to this country and settled in Pittsburg when he was three years of age. His life business has mainly been the manufacture of iron, the location of his furnaces, Lawrence county. His residence has been mainly Cincinnati. He is entirely a self-made man; has a large, strong person with strong common sense, and therefore moves solely on the solid foundation of facts. His residence is the old Longworth mansion on Pike street, built by Martin Baum early in the century. Mr. Sinton's only living child is the wife of Chas. P. Taft, editor of the Times-Star.
To be a public man of note renders such an one an object of interest to the public, to say nothing of the gratification in that fact to the public man himself. One such, a fellow-townsman in Cincinnati, we seldom failed to look upon as we passed him on the street from his personal attractions and general reputations as a man. He was rather short in stature but a full-chested erect, plumply-built and very handsome man, with dark smiling eyes, a noble, massive head adorned with a wealth of dark luxuriant hair: life seemed to go pleasant with him. We never heard the sound of his voice: but once, just before the civil war, were simultaneously in each other’s eyes. We had met and passed on a side street, each of us alone; then we turned to gaze upon him at the same moment he had turned to gaze on us. The reader has had a like experience and appreciates the mutual mortification of the moment. Which of us felt the meanest is an unsolved problem. When on our late tour over Ohio we were in the Tom Corwin mansion, at Lebanon, Judge Sage, whose home it is, and who was with us, said with pride and enhancing the attractions of the mansion, “In the room over us George H. Pendleton passes several days when he was an infant.” This was the full-rounded man we met as above described. His fellow-townsman called him “Gentleman George” from his suave manners and courtly ways. Then he was “well fixed” for pleasant contemplation possessing, as reputed, ample means, the best social relations, the best Virginia blood the revolutionary war coursing through his veins and as the mother of his children one of the most beautiful, sweetly-mannered of women, and of the blonde order, a daughter of Francis Scott Key, author of the never-to-be-forgotten ode, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Her tragic death in Central Park, a few years ago, thrown from her carriage, is remembered with a pang.
From Historical Collections of Ohio:by Henry Howe; Pub. 1888