Roeliff Brinkerhoff - Postbellum Career

Postbellum Career

Brinkerhoff was the intimate friend of many nationally prominent figures including Salmon P. Chase, James G. Blaine, James A. Garfield and Rutherford B. Hayes. In 1873, he became President of the Mansfield Savings Bank, and in 1878 was appointed a member of the board of state charities and continued in that position under different administrations serving eleven terms over a period of thirty years.

Blaine had initially promised Brinkerhoff an appointment as U.S. Minister to Holland, but schemed to have the sitting Ambassador Hugh Ewing replaced with his brother Charles Ewing, and there is no evidence that Blaine ever actually presented Brinkerhoff's name to the President, although both Senator John Sherman and General and Congressman John Beatty claim that Blaine had promised them to do so.

He showcased his compassion and liberal idealism when he traded on his political connections to abolish the use of mechanical restraints in treatments of the insane. Although his work was initially deemed "Brinkerhoff's Folly" by the press, his work led to the Toledo hospital system becoming the model asylum in the United States. He was selected as a member of the commission which selected the plans for its construction. He was one of the earliest American advocates of the cottage system, and understood that public opinion demanded reform and advancement.

In 1875, Brinkerhoff founded the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society at his home, whose first president was Senator Allen G. Thurman, followed by Rutherford B. Hayes, and later himself Brinkerhoff upon Hayes' death. He was soon named President Emeritus of the organization which exists to this day.

Through the society he was able to secure legislation and funding for the Ohio Monument at Jefferson Park, in Chicago. In a speech delivered before the legislature, he stated that:

"I remembered Greece and Palestine, and my speech was ready, for in men of renown Ohio was peerless among the states. At 11 o'clock when my turn came I amplified my idea and wound up with the suggestion that Ohio should be represented at the fair by a group of statuary in the center of which should be a noble matron representing Ohio, and all around her should be such children as Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Chase, Stanton and Garfield; and then upon the pedestal should be engraved the proud utterance of Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi, 'These are my jewels.' A resolution was unanimously adopted recommending the legislature to adopt the suggestion and appropriate the funds necessary to put it in granite bronze."

— General Roeliff Brinkerhoff

When the Ohio monument was dedicated at Jefferson Park, in Chicago, September 14, 1893, General Brinkerhoff delivered one of the principal addresses.