Cincinnati, in 1800, was growing to be important in the Northwest Territory, in part because of Fort Washington, to the rear on the right near the street marked Broadway. Enquirer file
By Jeff Suess
jsuess@enquirer.com
On Dec. 28, 1788, flatboats traveling down the Ohio River landed at what would later be Sycamore Street, directly across from the Licking River. Aboard were 11 families and 24 men, settlers with a plan to build a town in the Northwest Territory. A town than would grow to become Cincinnati.
Those settlers 225 years ago were pioneers. As the Revolutionary War ended, Americans turned west. The Northwest Territory, between Pennsylvania and the Mississippi River, north of the Ohio River, was untamed frontier.
Kentucky had 70,000 white settlers by then, but crossing into Ohio met with fierce resistance from the native Indian tribes.
In 1786, Benjamin Stites chased Indian thieves into the Little Miami Valley and took note of the fertile land. He reported to speculators back East.
John Cleves Symmes, a former New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress, was intrigued and came downriver to see the land. He purchased 1 million acres (later reduced to 311,682) from Congress in 1788 for 67 cents an acre.
The Symmes Purchase, or Miami Purchase, covered land between the Great Miami and Little Miami rivers, in what became Hamilton, Butler and Warren counties.
Symmes sold 10,000 acres to Stites and 800 acres to Matthias Denman. In November 1788, Stites’ group started the first settlement, Columbia, at the present site of Lunken Airport. Symmes set up the town of North Bend in February 1789.
‘Losantiville’ was settled opposite the Licking River
Denman, Col. Robert Patterson and John Filson scouted the future Cincinnati site on Sept. 22, 1788. Filson made a quick survey before he disappeared in the wilderness, probably a victim of an Indian attack.
Filson did contribute a name for the town: Losantiville, an odd composite of syllables from three languages. “L” for the Licking, “os” is Latin for “mouth,” “anti” is Greek for “opposite,” and “ville” is French for “town,” meaning “town opposite the Licking River.”
On Dec. 24, 1788, the party of settlers left Limestone (Maysville, Ky.), and after four days traversing 65 miles of floating ice, pulled ashore at what was later called Yeatman’s Cove (today that spot is about right field at Great American Ball Park).
Dr. Daniel Drake, the famed doctor and local historian, romanticized about that first night:
“Setting their watchmen around, they lay down with their feet to the blazing fires, and fell asleep under the music of the north wind whistling among the frozen limbs of the great sycamores and water maples which overhung them.”
The land where they would build Losantiville was a dense forest. The settlers immediately constructed a few log cabins, the first on what would be Front Street near Main. (Front Street was one block south of Second.)
Israel Ludlow, who replaced Filson as surveyor and proprietor, laid out the town in a grid plan modeled on Philadelphia, and drew lots for houses. The town extended to Northern Row (now Seventh Street), from Western Row (Central Avenue) to Eastern Row (Broadway). The riverfront was designated a public landing.
Fort Washington in Cincinnati, Ohio in the 1800s. From the Enquirer archives
Fort Washington built as protection from Indian attacks
The threat of Indian raids was ever present, and in 1789 Symmes requested protection from the government in Philadelphia. A fort would be built to protect the settlements and train soldiers to battle the Native Americans.
Symmes expected the fort to be located in North Bend, but it was too hilly. Columbia flooded frequently. Losantiville was chosen because it was in a basin, and strategically it was near the Licking River into Kentucky and close to the other settlements.
Fort Washington, named for the president who had taken office that April, was built 550 feet back from the Ohio River. In 1952, construction workers unearthed a powder magazine from the fort at Broadway and Third Street, confirming its location. The monument marking the original site has been moved twice for construction of Fort Washington Way and is now on Ludlow Street near Lytle Park.
On Jan. 2, 1790, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, came to inspect Fort Washington. He was pleased with the fort but disliked the name Losantiville.
Two days later, he changed it to Cincinnati, after the Society of the Cincinnati, a military society for officers in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.
The society, in which George Washington served as president general, was in turn named for Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, a Roman farmer in the fifth century B.C., who left his fields to lead Rome into battle. Victorious, he was called to serve as a temporary dictator, then gave up the power to return to the plow. A statue of Cincinnatus stands in Sawyer Point.
This monument, marking the site of Fort Washington, was placed at East Third Street in 1900, but now is on Ludlow Street. Photo by W.B. Poynter.
For five years, Fort Washington served as the military headquarters for the entire territory. After St. Clair lost 613 troops to Miami chief Little Turtle in the heaviest U.S. military loss ever to Indians, Major Gen. “Mad” Anthony Wayne took command of the fort. Wayne’s victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers led to the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which ended Indian hostilities in Southwest Ohio.
In 1804, the garrison moved to Newport, and Fort Washington was torn down in 1808 to make way for a growing city. Cincinnati was incorporated as a city in 1819 and by 1850 had a population of 115,435 as the sixth-largest city in the U.S.
Alternate street names?
A rival town plan from Joel Williams used different street names than Ludlow and broke the public landing into lots. If the courts had sided with Williams, the Downtown streets would have been:
Second: Columbia
Third: Hill
Fourth: High
Fifth: Byrd
Sixth: Gano
Walnut: Cider
Vine: Jefferson
Race: Beech
Plum: Filson
Posted in: Uncategorized
Tags: American Indians, Benjamin Stites, Cincinnati history, Cincinnati's 225th anniversary, Cincinnatus, city plan, Did You Know?, Fort Washington, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, Israel Ludlow, Jeff Suess, John Cleves Symmes, John Filson, Losantiville, Matthias Denman, Northwest Territory, Robert Patterson
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