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Ohio

History Ohio Style

History Ohio Style with information about getting your own copy of the 2012-13 Ohio Historical Society Citizens’ Guide.

Anneliese Schmidt at the Ohio Village

Annaliese Schmidt and her husband are German immigrants who have made Ohio Village their home, and her delicious pies have been delighting visitors to the American House Hotel for years.

Timeline of Ohio: 1600’s

  • (1670) French explorer, Rene-Robert Cavelier, discovered Ohio region, claimed for France

1700’s

  • (1748) Ohio Company formed by Virginians
  • (1750) Ohio Company claimed land for England
  • (1754 – 1763) French and Indian War
  • (1763) France ceded all rights to the Ohio Territory to Britain in Treaty of Paris
  • (1768) Iroquois Indians ceded all lands south and east of Ohio River to British in Treaty of Fort Stanwix
  • (1775 – 1783) Revolutionary War
  • (1783) Treaty of Paris ended Revolutionary War; England ceded all lands in Ohio
  • (1785) Methods of surveying, dividing land in Ohio established by Land Ordinance of 1785
  • (1787) Ohio became part of Northwest Territory
  • (1788) First permanent white settlement in Ohio founded at Marietta
  • (1790 – 1794) Ohio Indian Wars
  • (1795) Treaty of Greeneville ended Ohio Indian Wars; Indians gave up most of lands

1800’s

  • (1800) Chillicothe became capital of Northwest Territory; Division Act created Indian Territory
  • (1802) Formation of state government in Ohio authorized by Congress
  • (1803) Ohio became 17th state, first state west of Allegheny Mountains; Chillicothe named state capital
  • (1810) Zanesville named state capital
  • (1812 – 1814) War of 1812
  • (1812) Columbus founded; Fort Meigs constructed to protect Ohio from invasion
  • (1813) British failed in attempt to overtake Fort Meigs; Oliver Perry Hazard’s fleet defeated British fleet at Battle of Lake Erie
  • (1816) State capital relocated to Columbus
  • (1832) Ohio and Lake Erie Canal opened
  • (1834) Anti-Slavery Society founded in Zanesville
  • (1835) Boundary dispute between Ohio and Michigan caused Toledo War; Ohio granted contested lands around Toledo
  • (1840) William Henry Harrison elected U.S. President
  • (1842) Ohio’s last Indian tribe, Wyandots, relinquished all claims to land within state; left Ohio
  • (1845) Miami and Erie Canal opened
  • (1851) Current Ohio Constitution adopted
  • (1852) Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written in Ohio by Harriet Beecher Stowe, increased racial tensions between North and South
  • (1859) In an effort to end slavery, abolitionist John Brown’s led raid on Harper’s Ferry
  • (1861 – 1865) Civil War
  • (1863) Confederate Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan led troops on raid across southern Ohio (Morgan’s Raid); Battle of Buffington Island was only Civil War battle fought in Ohio
  • (1864) President Abraham Lincoln promoted Ohioan Ulysses S. Grant to supreme commander of Union forces; Ohioan William T. Sherman’s Union forces captured Atlanta; Sherman led troops on “March to the Sea” from Atlanta to Savannah
  • (1865) Robert E. Lee surrendered Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant
  • (1868) Ulysses S. Grant elected U.S. President
  • (1869) Cincinnati Redstockings, first professional baseball team, founded; W. F. Semple of Mount Vernon patented chewing gum
  • (1870) John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil; Benjamin Goodrich opened rubber plant in Akron
  • (1876) Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, elected U.S. President; Ashtabula train accident killed 83
  • (1878) First cash register developed by James Ritty
  • (1879) Ohioan Thomas Edison invented electric light bulb; Cleveland became first city in world to be lighted electrically by arc lights; National Cash Register Co. founded in Dayton
  • (1880) James Garfield elected U.S. President
  • (1881) President Garfield shot by Charles Guiteau
  • (1884) Three-day riot occurred at Cincinnati Courthouse following verdict of murder trial, 45 townspeople killed, 139 wounded
  • (1888) Benjamin Harrison elected U.S. President
  • (1896) Ohioan William McKinley elected U.S. President; first x-rays used in surgery by John Gilman
  • (1898) Roller bearing invented by Henry Timken

Ohio (Listeni/ˈh./) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Ohio is the 34th most extensive, the 7th most populous, and the 10th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The state’s capital and largest city is Columbus.

The name “Ohio” originated from Iroquois word ohi-yo’, meaning “great river.”   The state, originally partitioned from the Northwest Territory, was admitted to the Union as the 17th state (and the first under the Northwest Ordinance) on March 1, 1803.   Although there are conflicting narratives regarding the origin of the nickname, Ohio is historically known as the “Buckeye State” (relating to the Ohio buckeye tree) and Ohioans are also known as “Buckeyes.”

The government of Ohio is composed of the executive branch, led by the Governor; the legislative branch, which comprises the Ohio General Assembly; and the judicial branch, which is led by the Supreme Court. Currently, Ohio occupies 18 seats in theUnited States House of Representatives.  Ohio is known for its status as both a swing state and a bellwether in national elections.

Native Americans

Archeological evidence suggests that the Ohio Valley was inhabited by nomadic people as early as 13,000 BC.   These early nomads disappeared from Ohio by 1,000 BC, “but their material culture provided a base for those who followed them.”  Between 1,000 and 800 BC, the sedentary Adena culture emerged. As Ohio historian George W. Knepper notes, this sophisticated culture was “so named because evidences of their culture were excavated in 1902 on the grounds of Adena, Thomas Worthington‘s estate located near Chillicothe.”  The Adena were able to establish “semi-permanent” villages because they domesticated plants, which included squashsunflowers, and perhaps corn. Cultivation of these in addition to hunting and gathering supported more settled, complex villages.  The most spectacular remnant of the Adena culture is the Great Serpent Mound, located in Adams County, Ohio.

Around 100 BC, the Adena were joined in Ohio Country by the Hopewell people, who were named for the farm owned by Captain M. C. Hopewell, where evidence of their unique culture was discovered.  Like the Adena, the Hopewell people participated in a mound-building culture. Their complex, large and technologically sophisticated earthworks can be found in modern-day MariettaNewark, and Circleville.  The Hopewell, however, disappeared from the Ohio Valley in about 600 AD. Little is known about the people who replaced them.   Researchers have identified two additional, distinct prehistoric cultures: the Fort Ancient people and the Whittlesey Focus people.   Both cultures apparently disappeared in the 17th century, perhaps decimated by infectious diseases spread in epidemics from early European contact. The Native Americans had no immunity to common European diseases. Some scholars believe that the Fort Ancient people “were ancestors of the historic Shawnee people, or that, at the very least, the historic Shawnees absorbed remnants of these older peoples.”

American Indians in the Ohio Valley were greatly affected by the aggressive tactics of the Iroquois Confederation, based in central and western New York.   After the so-called Beaver Wars in the mid-17th century, the Iroquois claimed much of the Ohio country as hunting and, more importantly, beaver-trapping ground. After the devastation of epidemics and war in the mid-17th century, which largely emptied the Ohio country of indigenous people by the mid-to-late 17th century, the land gradually became repopulated by the mostly Algonquian-speaking descendants of its ancient inhabitants, that is, descendants of the Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian cultures. Many of these Ohio-country nations were multi-ethnic (sometimes multi-linguistic) societies born out of the earlier devastation brought about by disease, war, and subsequent social instability. They subsisted on agriculture (corn, sunflowers, beans, etc.) supplemented by seasonal hunts. By the 18th century, they were part of a larger global economy brought about by European entry into the fur trade.

The indigenous nations to inhabit Ohio in the historical period included the Miamis (a large confederation); Wyandots (made up of refugees, especially from the fractured Huron confederacy); Delawares (pushed west from their historic homeland in New Jersey);Shawnees (also pushed west, although they may have been descended from the Fort Ancient people of Ohio); Ottawas (more commonly associated with the upper Great Lakes region); Mingos (like the Wyandot, a group recently formed of refugees from Iroquois); and Eries (gradually absorbed into the new, multi-ethnic “republics,” namely the Wyandot).   Ohio country was also the site of Indian massacres, such as the Yellow Creek MassacreGnadenhutten and Pontiac’s Rebellion school massacre.

Colonial and Revolutionary eras

During the 18th century, the French set up a system of trading posts to control the fur trade in the region. In 1754, France and Great Britain fought a war that was known in North America as the French and Indian War and in Europe as the Seven Years War. As a result of the Treaty of Paris, the French ceded control of Ohio and the remainder of the Old Northwest to Great Britain.

Pontiac’s Rebellion in the 1760s, however, posed a challenge to British military control. This came to an end with the colonists’ victory in the American Revolution. In the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain ceded all claims to Ohio country to the United States.

Northwest Territory: 1787–1803

Plaque commemorating the Northwest Ordinance outside Federal Hall in lower Manhattan

The United States created the Northwest Territory under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.   Slavery was not permitted in the new territory. Settlement began with the founding of Marietta by the Ohio Company of Associates, which had been formed by a group of American Revolutionary War veterans. Following the Ohio Company, the Miami Company(also referred to as the “Symmes Purchase“) claimed the southwestern section, and the Connecticut Land Company surveyed and settled the Connecticut Western Reserve in present-day Northeast Ohio.

The old Northwest Territory originally included areas previously known as Ohio Country and Illinois Country. As Ohio prepared for statehood, the Indiana Territory was created, reducing the Northwest Territory to approximately the size of present-day Ohio plus the eastern half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and the eastern tip of the Upper Peninsula.

Under the Northwest Ordinance, areas of the territory could be defined and admitted as states once their population reached 60,000. Although Ohio’s population numbered only 45,000 in December 1801, Congress determined that the population was growing rapidly and Ohio could begin the path to statehood. The assumption was that it would exceed 60,000 residents by the time it was admitted as a state.

Statehood: 1803–present

James A. Garfield, President of United States from Ohio.

On February 19, 1803, President Jefferson signed an act of Congress that approved Ohio’s boundaries and constitution. However, Congress had never passed a resolution formally admitting Ohio as the 17th state. The current custom of Congress declaring an official date of statehood did not begin until 1812, with Louisiana‘s admission as the 18th state. Although no formal resolution of admission was required, when the oversight was discovered in 1953, Ohio congressman George H. Bender introduced a bill in Congress to admit Ohio to the Union retroactive to March 1, 1803. At a special session at the old state capital in Chillicothe, the Ohio state legislature approved a new petition for statehood that was delivered to Washington, D.C. on horseback. On August 7, 1953 (the year of Ohio’s 150th anniversary), President Eisenhower signed an act that officially declared March 1, 1803 the date of Ohio’s admittance into the Union.

Although many Native Americans had migrated west to evade American encroachment, others remained settled in the state, sometimes assimilating in part. In 1830 under President Andrew Jackson, the US government forced Indian Removal of most tribes to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.

In 1835, Ohio fought with Michigan in the Toledo War, a mostly bloodless boundary war over the Toledo Strip. Congress intervened, making Michigan’s admittance as a state conditional on ending the conflict. In exchange for giving up its claim to the Toledo Strip, Michigan was given the western two-thirds of the Upper Peninsula, in addition to the eastern third that was already considered part of the state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio

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