Introduction to History of Ohio
In prehistoric times Ohio was the home of Indians known as Mound Builders. When the French first settled in Canada in the early 17th century, the Erie Indians were living south of Lake Erie, but in mid-century they were conquered and dispersed by the Iroquois. The Ohio River was discovered by the French, probably by La Salle on his trip of 1669.
Important dates in Ohioc. 1670 The French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, probably was the first white man to reach the Ohio region.1747 The Ohio Company of Virginia was organized to colonize the Ohio River Valley.1763 France surrendered its claim to the Ohio region to Britain.1787 The Northwest Territory was established.1788 The first permanent white settlement in Ohio was established in Marietta.1795 Indian wars in the Ohio region ended with the Treaty of Greenville.1800 The Division Act divided the Northwest Territory into two parts, and Chillicothe became the capital of the new Northwest Territory.1803 Ohio became the 17th state on March 1.1813 Commodore Oliver H. Perry's fleet defeated the British in the Battle of Lake Erie.1832 The Ohio and Erie Canal was completed.1836 The Ohio-Michigan boundary dispute was settled.1845 The Miami and Erie Canal was completed.1870 Benjamin F. Goodrich began the manufacture of rubber goods in Akron.1914 Ohio passed the Conservancy Act after floods in 1913.1922 The Miami River Valley flood-control project was finished.1938 The flood-control project in the Muskingum River Valley was completed.1955 The Ohio Turnpike was opened to traffic.1959 Terms of the governor and other high state officials were increased from two years to four.1967 Ohio voters approved a plan for reapportionment of the state legislature.1971 Ohio adopted an income tax.1993 Ohio voters approved the sale of $200 million worth of bonds to finance improvements and expansion in the state's parks and other recreation areas.2003 Ohio celebrated its bicentennial.Period of Settlement
In the 18th century Miamis, Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots (or Hurons), Mingoes (Iroquois), Ottawas and other tribes moved into the region. The Wyandots permitted the English to build a fort on Sandusky Bay in 1745. The French, who had a monopoly on the Ohio country fur trade, drove out the English. Meanwhile, the Ohio Company was formed by a group of Virginians, and Christopher Gist was sent to explore the Ohio Valley in 1750–52. After the French and Indian War, France was forced to cede its North American lands to Great Britain and Spain.
Indian resentment against British and American encroachment led to Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763. To pacify the Indians, Britain proclaimed the lands west of the Alleghenies closed to white settlement. A Moravian mission, Schoenbrunn, was founded near present New Philadelphia in 1772, but was abandoned during the Revolutionary War.
After the war Virginia in 1784 ceded to the United States the region northwest of the Ohio River, except for a tract between the Scioto and Little Miami rivers. This was known as the Virginia Military District, and was awarded to Virginia war veterans. Connecticut ceded its western claims, which extended to the Mississippi River, to the United States in 1786 except for a section between Pennsylvania and the Sandusky River called the Western Reserve.
With the exception of these two tracts and areas still held by Indians, the northwestern lands (to the Mississippi) then belonged to the nation. In 1787 the U.S. Congress passed an ordinance establishing a territorial government for this area.
The Ohio Company of Associates bought a tract on the southeast border of present Ohio and under the leadership of Rufus Putnam established Marietta in 1788. In the same year a New Jersey group founded Cincinnati on the tract known as the Miami, or Symmes, Purchase French immigrants settled Gallipolis on the same tract in 1790. The first community the Virginia Military District was Manchester, founded in 1791.
The Indian Wars
The Indians became increasingly hostile to white settlement, although they had signed treaties with the United States ceding to it the various tracts of land opened to settlers. A United States military expedition against the Indians in 1790 was defeated near present Fort Wayne, Indiana. A second expedition, under General St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, met a crushing defeat on the Wabash River in 1791. Anthony Wayne was made commander of the Northwest Territory, and in 1794 overwhelmed the Indians at the battle of Fallen Timbers, near the Maumee River.
Statehood
In 1795 by the Treaty of Greenville two-thirds of the present state was ceded by the Indians to the United States. Settlement of the Western Reserve, which still belonged to Connecticut, started the next year. Population grew throughout the area of settlement, and in 1799 the first territorial legislature met. The Western Reserve became part of the territory in 1800. In the same year the territory was split, the western part becoming Indiana Territory, to which the northern part (Michigan) was annexed in 1802. Ohio became the 17th state in 1803, with Chillicothe as the capital. (Because of questions as to the exact date of admission, in 1953 Congress declared March 1, 1803, to be the official date.)
During the War of 1812 the British made several unsuccessful attempts to invade the United States through Ohio. Enemy attacks were repulsed at Fort Meigs on the Maumee River and Fort Stephenson on the Sandusky River. The Battle of Lake Erie was fought at Put-in-Bay in Ohio's South Bass Island.
Battle of Lake Erie was an American victory in the War of 1812. The eventual victor, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, is shown being transferred from his sinking flagship to another vessel.The state capital was moved to Zanesville in 1810, back to Chillicothe in 1812, and to Columbus in 1816. In 1835 Michigan, applying for statehood, claimed as its southern boundary a line south of Toledo. The dispute, known as the Toledo War, reached the stage where troops were mobilized in both Ohio and Michigan. Finally, the United States Congress settled the matter by awarding the disputed area to Ohio. Virginia relinquished all claims to the Military District in 1852.
Commercial Growth
Ohio was ideally located for trade, and in the second quarter of the 19th century developed a fine transportation system. Extension of the Cumberland, or National, Road across the state began in 1825 and was completed in 1840. In 1825, also, two canals connecting Lake Erie with the Ohio River were started—the Ohio and Erie from Cleveland to Portsmouth, completed in 1832; and the Miami and Erie from Cincinnati to Toledo, completed in 1843.
The first steam railroad began operation in 1837. By 1846 there were lines from Cincinnati to Sandusky, Cincinnati to Cleveland, and Cleveland to Pittsburgh Major industries of the first half of the 19th century were the manufacture of glass, pottery, and paper, and meat packing.
Civil War Period
Many Ohioans were strongly opposed to slavery. Slaves escaping across the Ohio River from Kentucky were helped by Ohio's Underground Railroad, which was active in many parts of the state. In 1855 antislavery advocates met in Columbus and drafted a political platform. They took the name Republican, a name already adopted by similar groups in other states. Ohio thus helped found the Republican party, which dominated the state's politics for many decades.
Before the Civil War proslavery forces in Cincinnati organized the Knights of the Golden Circle. When the war began, the Knights and their sympathizers came to be known as Copperheads. Newspapers in Columbus and Cincinnati supported the Copperhead movement, whose members believed in negotiation rather than war with the South.
When Confederate General John Hunt Morgan invaded southern Ohio in 1863, however, the Copperheads failed to aid him. Morgan was defeated and imprisoned in the state penitentiary, from which he escaped. In the same year C. L. Vallandigham, a Copperhead leader, was tried and banished for his Southern sympathies. From Canada he ran unsuccessfully for the Ohio governorship in 1863.
Later Development
In the latter 19th century Ohio became largely industrial. A great ironmaking and steel-producing area was built up around Cleveland and Youngstown. After the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1859, oil refining was developed in Ohio. In 1885 oil was discovered near Lima, and later in the central and southwestern regions. About 1910 Akron became the country's rubber-products capital.
With its great concentration of heavy industry, Ohio suffered severely in the Depression of the 1930's. The effects lasted until the industrial revival of World War II.
As population grew and the state became increasingly urbanized, spring flooding of Ohio's many rivers was an ever-greater disaster. The floods of 1913 took more than 400 lives, and were followed by extensive flood-control projects. Even with the protection that these gave, the floods of 1937 made 750,000 persons homeless and took 14 lives. In 1959 floods caused 15 deaths and more than $100,000,000 in damage.
Ohio's largest city, Cleveland, became the first major American city to elect a black mayor when Carl B. Stokes was chosen in 1967. In the late 1960's, there was much social disorder in the state, as in other parts of the country, with riots in black ghettos and protests by antiwar demonstrators. During a five-year period, the National Guard was called out 30 times to restore order. In 1970, in an incident that focused national attention on Ohio, four students were killed by guardsmen during an antiwar rally Kent State University.
In the late 1970's and early 1980's, Ohio faced severe economic problems. During that period, the city of Cleveland almost went bankrupt, and there were numerous teachers' strikes over money-related issues. Also the state's steel and rubber industries were depressed, and unemployment increased. By the mid-1980's, the economy had begun to improve.
The environment has been the subject of much research and improvement since the mid-1980's. Voters in 1985 approved $100 million to develop methods of reducing the sulfur content of the state's coal, which would widen its use; a power plant using the improved coal opened in 1993.
Pollution levels in the state's rivers and Lake Erie were reduced in the early 1990's. Additionally, in 1993, $200 million was set aside for improving and expanding the state's park and recreational areas.
Since then, Ohio has met different challenges. Foreign competition has weakened its steel industry, and other industries have moved out of the state due to climate conditions or labor costs. Income for farmers has also declined.