The Peace of Paris of 1783 ended the Revolutionary War, recognized the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, and granted the new nation all the lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. A year later, Virginia ceded to the national government its claims to a major part of this area. New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut soon followed suit. The lands were ceded with the stipulation that they were to be sold for the common benefit, the proceeds to be used to repay to the States the expenses they had incurred in the Revolutionary War.
Settlers had begun to move into the new country even before it was formally surrendered to the United States by the British. Emigration was increasing even while the States were debating the ownership of what came to be called the Northwest Territory. In the great Ordinance of 1787, the Continental Congress established a governmental framework for the area. For the time being, it was to be ruled by a governor appointed by the Congress, but as soon as any major subdivision of the Territory reached a population of 60,000, it could organize itself as a State, and would then be admitted to the Union on terms of complete equality with the original thirteen. This was a new concept in colonialism, as revolutionary as the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Equally revolutionary was the prohibition of slavery in the Territory, and the provision that in every township, a full section of land was to be set aside for the support of education.
Much of the emigration to the Northwest Territory was organized and directed by land companies that acquired from the Congress, sometimes by questionable methods, grants of huge tracts of land. One of these was the Ohio Company of Boston, which acquired title to 1 and 1/2 million acres between the Muskingum and Scioto rivers at a price in real money of 8 to 10 cents an acre.
On October 5, 1787, Congress appointed Arthur St. Clair, a general in the Revolutionary War, as first governor of the Northwest territory. One of the three judges the Territory was to have, declined the appointment, and on February 19, 1788, John Cleves Symmes, a member of the Continental Congress from Trenton, New Jersey, was appointed in his place. Judge Symmes had visited the Ohio country in the previous summer, and was greatly impressed with its possibilities for settlement. On his return East, he organized the Miami Land Company, and petitioned Congress to authorize the Treasury to negotiate the sale to this company of the tract of land - thought to be two million acres - lying to the north of the Ohio River and bounded by the two Miamis on the east and west.
Symmes did not wait for the negotiations with the Treasury to be concluded to begin promoting the sale of the lands he expected to own. His prospectus of November 26, 1787, addressed "To the Respectable Public," described the fertility, climate and other advantages and attractions of the area in glowing terms, and offered to sell land at a bargain rate of 66 2/3 cents per acre, the price to increase to $1.00 per acre on May 1, 1788. Persuading the Treasury to locate the grant where he wanted it - that is, between the Little Miami on the east and the Great Miami on the west - proved to be a far more difficult affair than Symmes had anticipated, and in fact, the negotiations were not concluded until 1796. The innumerable controversies arising from the disputes over the location of the grant, careless surveys, and Judge Symmes's own unbusinesslike proceedings, were to embitter the remaining years of his life.
One of the earliest of Symmes's land sales was made in January, 1788, to Matthias Denman of Springfield, New Jersey. For a little less than $500.00, Denman bought a plot of about 800 acres across the Ohio from the mouth of the Licking River, an area now bounded by Broadway on the east, Liberty Street on the north, Central Avenue on the west and the river on the south. Denman bought the land with the intention of laying out a town in the area, and operating from it a ferry across the Ohio. Later, in the same year, Denman entered into a partnership with Robert Patterson and John Filson to develop the land. Filson was to survey the tract and lay it out into lots, and Patterson was to persuade emigrants to settle on it. Filson, a jack of all trades, thought up the name "Losantiville" for the town-to-be, but before he could begin his survey, he disappeared -- it is presumed that he was killed by Indians -- and he was replaced as surveyor by Israel Ludlow.
While all the tugging and hauling and controversy with the Treasury were going on, emigrants to the new territory were arriving in the nearest settlement upriver, Limestone, now Marysville, Kentucky. On November 16, 1788, a party of 26 men, women and children, led by Benjamin Stites, left Limestone for the new country. Two days later, at a point 3/4 of a mile downstream from the mouth of the Little Miami, the Stites party landed from their flatboat, and proceeded to construct a blockhouse. They called their settlement "Columbia," and since the area in which they established their homesteads and farms is now within the Cincinnati city limits, the Stites party is entitled to the distinction of being the pioneer settlers of the city. By the end of 1790, there were 50 cabins, a mill and a school in the settlement, and Benjamin Stites had visions of Columbia becoming a great city.
But destiny had other plans. Patterson too was assembling a party of emigrants at Limestone, and on Christmas Eve, 1788, he and 27 other hardy souls braved the wintry weather and a river choked with floating ice, and set off on the 68-mile journey down river to the Denman tract. Four days later, on December 28, 1788, the party landed at Yeatman's Cove, at what is now the foot of Sycamore Street. the first order of business was to provide shelter for the emigrants, and this was done by building a log cabin with a "stick" chimney at what later became the corner of Front and Main Streets.
Israel Ludlow wasted no time with his survey. By January 7, he had ready a plat of what is now the downtown area. The 28 settlers then "drew" for the city lots - called "in-lots" - that they were to receive free of charge on condition that they built dwellings not less than 20 feet square on their lots within two years. Each of the original settlers was to receive in addition the gift of a larger "out-lot," located north of 5th Street, on condition that he raised a crop on it for two successive years. Sales of "in-lots" were made at from $2.00 to $4.00 each to later arrivals who did not qualify for free land, but within a few years, the price of city lots rose sharply; in 1791, the lot at the corner of 4th and Broadway, on which the Queen City Club now stands, was sold for $11.00.
The third landing in the Symmes Purchase was made on February 2, 1789, by the Judge himself at North Bend. By May, three months later, there were already 40 cabins at North Bend, and many more were building. The Judge made his home at North Bend throughout the many vicissitudes of the settlement. It was there that William Henry Harrison married the Judge's daughter Anna, and where the Judge himself was buried when he died in 1814.
The Stites, Patterson and Symmes settlements were established on lands on which the Shawnee Indians hunted and raised their corn and beans. Relations, between the white settlers and the Indians were intermittently friendly, but the basis for hostility was ever-present, and a major concern of promoters like Symmes was to obtain military protection for their settlements. Shortly after the landing of the Stites party at Columbia, a sergeant and six soldiers were sent to join them. The North Bend settlement was also given a garrison of 18, which the judge considered inadequate. Their commander, Ensign Luce, had orders to build a fort on a site that would provide maximum protection for the settlers. Judge Symmes expected the fort to be built at North Bend, but over his strenuous objections, a location just east of the Denman-Patterson settlement was selected. This site was chosen by an artillery officer, Major John Doughty, because it was "high and healthy, abounding with never failing springs, etc."
The plans for the fort, which was to be an ambitious structure, large enough to house a garrison of 1,500, were drawn by Major Doughty. At the end of 1789, General Josiah Harmar, commanding the troops stationed on the Northwest frontier, arrived with 300 men, and made the fort his headquarters. Harmar also gave the fort its name. In a letter of January 14, 1790 to Secretary of War, Henry Knox, he described the fort and added, "On account of its superior excellence I have thought it proper to honor it with the name of Fort Washington."
The location of the fort at Losantiville, then a village of perhaps 20 cabins and between 50 and 100 inhabitants, made it inevitable that it should forge ahead of Columbia and North Bend in the race to become the Queen City of the West. The fort and its garrison attracted settlers and trade, and the village grew rapidly from 1789 on. By 1800 the population had grown to a phenomenal 750. Indeed, the town had already grown large enough by 1792 to have its first riot.
Governor St. Clair made his first official visit to Losantiville on January 2, 1790. He made the trip from his headquarters at Marietta by flatboat. He was met at the Public Landing by a welcoming party of citizens and soldiers, and escorted with due ceremony to Fort Washington, to the sound of a 14-gun salute.
The St. Clair visit had two important consequences. Firstly, the Governor gave Hamilton County its name, in honor of the Secretary of the Treasury of the new national government, Alexander Hamilton. Secondly, the story goes that the Governor was standing on the roof of his flatboat when he came in sight of the cabins clustered to the west of Fort Washington. He turned to one of his aides with the question, "What is the name of this town, anyhow?" "Losantiville" did not please St. Clair, and before he left for the Illinois country on January 5th, he ordered John Filson's artificial and awkward name replaced with the name "Cincinnati," in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, an association of former officers of the Continental Army, of which the Governor himself was a member. Whether the name change was made by common consent, or simply imposed by the Governor on an acquiescent citizenry, the surviving records fail to tell us.
--Cincinnati Park Board Archives
