OHIO

Ohio settlement dates back to some of the earliest documented records in America.  Some 3,000 years ago, the Adena and Hopewell people left a number of ceremonial mounds behind in and around the southern areas of the state.    By the time the European explorers had arrived in the area, these cultures were long gone and in their place lived the Algonquin and Iroquoian tribes.  

French explorer, Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle explored the Ohio River valley in 1670 and may have traversed further into Ohio itself.  La Salle claimed the region for France, but Great Britain also staked their claim on the area.  This area   was subject to a continuing conflict between the French and the British as there was a discrepancy in who owned the area between the Ohio River and Canada.  When France rescinded all claims to the territory and transferred ownership to the British, the United States claimed ownership by virtue of its Revolutionary War victory over Britain

There was a thought that the boundary lines of the original colonies should be extended to include the new territory but this idea was discarded.  The Government passed the Ordinance of 1787 as bounty land for the soldiers of the Revolution and this became known as the Northwest Territory.  The Northwest Territory was broken off later into five full states and part of a sixth state.

In 1747, the Puritans of Massachusetts and Connecticut formed the Ohio Company and purchased about a million acres of land for two-thirds of a dollar per acre.  This area later formed Athens, Gallia  Miegs, Morgan, Noble,  and Washington counties.  Four and a quarter million additional acres were set aside between the Scioto and the Little Miami Rivers as settlement by Virginians and Kentuckians in about 1800.  The Chillicote section in Ross county drew more Kentuckians and a group of Tenneseans.  There was one portion of the Ohio valley which was called the Western Reserve, so called because it had been "reserved" for future expansion of Connecticut.  Connecticut sold its holdings in 1795.  

The next two districts thrown open to settlers brought large groups of Scotch-Irish, Germans and Quakers from Pennsylvania.  A later migration brought settlers down the Ohio River from New Jersey.  These last people settled in the area between the two Miami Rivers.  Added to that mixture were more Scotch-Irish and a group of Dutch settlers.

After the U.S. forces under General Anthony Wayne moved the Indian tribes from the Lake Erie section in 1794, another four million acre tract was opened for settlement and was known as the Western Reserve.  This area included the northeast corner of Ohio along Lake Erie.  Into that area came former Connecticut residents, many of whose prior holdings had been burned out by the British during the Revolutionary War.  This land was often referred to as the Fire Lands".  

A new section, called the Refugee Tract was set aside for Canadians who had aided the American cause and lost their lands as a result.    This occurred in 1801.  In 1815, the north-west area was opened for settlement and people came in from the South and the Eastern areas.  The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 increased accessibility to the inland regions and people traveled west via the new waterways.  Although 95% of Ohio was wooded land at the time of the arrival of the settlers, much of this was cleared for farmland.  

Ohio is defined by its waterways, and waterways, as we know, were used by the frontier settlers like today's travelers use the local freeways, to get from here to there as quickly as possible.  The Ohio river winds from Pennsylvania to Ohio's southeastern boundary, which borders Kentucky and Indiana and forms the state's entire southern border.  In the north of Ohio, we have Lake Erie, which has more than 230 miles of frontage.  Lake Erie is part of an international waterway that provides access from the Atlantic Ocean into the North American interior.  Another aspect that makes water a highly probable route of travel is that it drains into the Mississippi River, the source of much of the frontier commercial enterprise.

On 1 March 1803, Ohio became the 17th state in the Union with its state capital being Columbus.  Ohio continued expansion with the completion of the Erie Canal and was a Union sympathizer during the Civil War.  At the end of the Civil War, Ohio pulled such notable entrepreneurs as John Davison Rockefeller, who founded the Standard Oil Company in 1860 and Benjamin F. Goodrich, who began the manufacture of rubber goods in Akron, making Ohio home to many tradesmen and laborers, a position which it continues to hold today.

OHIO RESEARCH LINKS