![]() The first sale of lots in the new town was held June 18, 1812. The eastern boundary of the new town now is Parsons Avenue. South Public Lane soon came to be called Livingston Avenue. The northern boundary of the new town was called North Public Lane (now Nationwide Boulevard). Wright laid out a town with wide streets forming a long rectangle that angled several degrees west of true north. Joel Wright, an experienced surveyor, was chosen to lay out the new town and was helped by local surveyor Joseph Vance. A few days later, at the urging of local representative Joseph Foos, the assembly chose Columbus as the name of the new capital city. 14, 1812, the Ohio General Assembly accepted the offer. The proprietors would make their money selling town lots in the new state capital. They also offered $50,000 – an immense sum in those days – to clear the land and construct buildings. Their offer to the Ohio General Assembly was 10 acres for a statehouse where the Statehouse is today and 10 acres for a penitentiary where the Cultural Arts Center in the old armory is today. That land was acquired by four men who had called themselves proprietors. It was a densely forested ridge dominated by a 40-foot-tall Native American mound where the intersection of Mound and High streets is today. They sold their land grants, and the land itself from Fifth Avenue on the north to Refugee Road on the south generally remained unsettled. The Refugee Tract’s recipients seldom came to Ohio. The land on the east bank of the river was part of a different land grant called Refugee Tract, which was set aside for residents of Nova Scotia who had lost property in the American Revolution. The place they picked was called the “High Banks opposite Franklinton at the Forks of the Scioto." It also was called “Wolf’s Ridge.” The land on the west bank of the Scioto where the village of Franklinton was founded in 1797 was part of the Virginia Military District and home to pioneer surveyor and town planner Lucas Sullivant. It later would become the village of Dublin.Īnd as it occasionally had been inclined to do, the Ohio General Assembly ignored the recommendation of its committee and picked a different site. The committee returned and reported its recommendation that the state capital be relocated to a high ridge along the Scioto River that carried the name of the Sells Plantations. The frontier villages of Circleville and Newark expressed interest, as did Delaware and Worthington. The committee of three men rode into the wilderness of Ohio and looked at many places that wanted to become the capital. Responding to these concerns, the Ohio General Assembly did what it sometimes did when confronted with an issue it could not easily resolve: It appointed a committee to study the problem and recommend a solution. ![]() Through many of those early years, several members of the General Assembly persistently had asked that the capital be moved closer to the center of the state. The state capital would remain in Chillicothe until 1808, when it was moved to Zanesville for a brief time before returning to Chillicothe. ![]() When Ohio became a state, the first state capital was in Chillicothe because the village was the home of several founders of the state, including Edward Tiffin, its first governor, and his brother-in-law, master politician and statesman Thomas Worthington.Įvery morning, Worthington could stand at his front porch of his hilltop home called Adena and note that the first statehouse was nearby. On the occasion of the birthday of Columbus, it is a story worth retelling. ![]()
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