or goods from western Ohio to Cincinnati due to the Miami and Erie Canal. Steamboats were repaired and built in the city. It became a meatpacking center, where livestock was slaughtered and butchered and sold in Cincinnati or shipped. Cincinnati became known as the "Porkopolis" when it became the pork-processing center of the country. Incorporation and pre-Civil War It was chartered as a city by an act of the General Assembly that passed February 5, 1819, and took effect on March 1 of that year. The same year, Cincinnati began publishing city directories, listing the names of the residents, their occupations, and their residential addresses. These old directories remain a valuable resource for people seeking information about early residents. The Medical College of Ohio was founded by Daniel Drake in 1819. It was the sixth-largest city in the country, with a population of 115,435, by 1850. In 1850 it was the first city in the United States to establish a Jewish Hospital. Police and fire services In 1819, when Cincinnati was incorporated as a city, the first city marshal, William Ruffin, was appointed. In May 1828, the police force consisted of one captain, one assistant, and five patrolmen. By 1850, the city authorized positions for a police chief and six lieutenants, but it was 1853 before the first police chief, Jacob Keifer, was appointed and he was dismissed after 3 weeks. Cincinnati accompanied its growth by paying men to act as its Cincinnati Fire Department in 1853, making the first full-time paid fire department in the United States. It was the first in the world to use steam fire engines. Abolitionists and the Underground Railroad Cincinnati was an important stop for the Underground Railroad in pre-Civil War times. It bordered a slave state, Kentucky, and is often mentioned as a destination for many people escaping the bonds of slavery. There are many harrowing stories involving abolitionists, runaways, slave traders and free men. Allen Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in 1824 as the first Black church in Ohio. It was an important stop on the Underground Railroad for many years. It seeded many other congregations in the city, across the state, and throughout the Midwest. Lane Theological Seminary was established in the Walnut Hills section of Cincinnati in 1829 to educate Presbyterian ministers. Prominent New England pastor Lyman Beecher moved his family (Harriet and son Henry) from Boston to