Ohio's Bicentennial Capital 
Over the Back Fence Magazine | Spring 2001
The bloody Shawnee land, with an excess of one thousand prehistoric
earthen mounds and enclosures, stretched west of the Scioto River
and formed the newly founded Virginia Military District. Free land
tracts were given to the Revolutionary War veterans and their descendants.
Numerous Ross County, Ohio, Chillicothes preceded the present day Chillicothe.
The original spelling and pronunciation was Cha-lah-kaw-tha, which was
slowly anglicized to the present name Chillicothe, an Indian term signifying
a town or city. The expanding West brought five major military invasions
to the Shawnee Indian Chillicothes of the two Miamis and the Mad River
Valleys. Two of these military invasions were lead by the famed General
George Rogers Clark of the legendary Lewis and Clark expedition.
Shawnee's Old Chillicothe was destroyed four times, from 1779 to 1790,
and then rebuilt by the Shawnees on the same site of the present Chillicothe.
 The United States was expanding west of the Ohio Valley and Col. Nathaniel
Massie, in 1790, surveyed and explored the Virginia Military District
and was confronted with extreme Indian hostility resulting in the
loss of many lives. The Shawnee in 1795 signed The Greenville Treaty
and Col. Massie gave the first 100 settlers property.
They laid out Paint and Main Streets and the town called Massie's
Settlement, which later reverted back to the Indian term Chillicothe.
By 1798, the population growth had warranted the formation of Ross County,
named after James Ross of Pennsylvania. The Territorial Governor, General
St. Clair, named Chillicothe as the Ross County seat. During that
same year, the state of Kentucky declared a right to slavery and many
settlers abandoned their homes and crossed into Ohio, whose territorial
government was against this controversial issue.
Thomas Worthington and Samuel Smith, esquires, were mandated by the Common Pleas
Court to construct a courthouse, a jail and a jailer's house to govern the newly
founded seat of government. In 1799 a $1,200 tax levy was passed for the construction
of these public buildings. At first a log courthouse was built on the corner
of Second and Walnut, owned by Bazil Abrams, in which the lower room was used
for the legislature, church and a singing school. The upper rooms held a billiard
table and a place for gamblers and the Abrams family.
A $1,000 loan was secured to build a stone courthouse after Chillicothe had been
made the capital of the Northwest Territory. This building was to supply a
suitable place for the legislature to hold its sessions.
The Ross County jailer/jail house, a two story wood structure, was built in 1801
just west of the courthouse, complete with pillory, stocks and whipping post.
The courthouse's first case involved John Bowman who repeatedly stabbed and killed
John Betz after a tavern argument. Bowman was jailed and sentenced to be hanged
but was retried and branded with the letter "M," for murderer, in his
left palm and was run out of town. It was John Betz's father, Adam, who was
doorkeeper of the courthouse, which was later to be the state-house. Betz
was also jailer for more than thirty years.
February 1801, the first stone for the courthouse was hauled to the
building site on Main and Paint Street, and by the month ol April, glass
or windows was ordered. The stone courthouse was 45 by 42 feet with
a semi-circle projection to the rear of the structure; this seated a
judge's bench. The belfry had white and green slats with a spread eagle
weather vane atop a gilt ball, which ornamented the small town. The
building consisted of two rooms on the lower floor and a large jury
room on the second floor. The building was badly lighted and rough finished,
with a large fireplace at each end and a wide stairway in one corner
leading to the second floor. Major William Rutledge, a soldier of the
Revolution, did the masonry work for the courthouse and William Guthrie
did the carpentering.
The legislature held their first session in the newly constructed
courthouse in 1801 during the convention that framed the Constitution
of Ohio. The "Father of Ohio's Constitution," Michael
Baldwin, penned the 1802 state document at the Red Lion Tavern owned
by William Keys on Water Street, with the head of a whisky barrel
used as a desk.The state house was not fully finished and paid for
by taxes till 1802 or early 1803. On January 3, 1803, Dr. Edward
Tiffin was elected Ohio's first governor, even though Congress did
not approve of the Ohio constitution nor did it rec
ognize Ohio as the 17th state until February 19, 1803. Chillicothe
had expanded to seventy or more sturdy cabins, along with a dozen
well-built frame homes and had the first stone public building in
the newfound state.
The territory was settling in and the state house was active as
the capital of Ohio from 1803 to 1810 and then from 1812 to 1816.
The state house had seen such notables as William Henry Harrison,
Henry Clay, Aaron Burr and Daniel Webster. The great Indian Chief
Tecumseh even delivered a speech from the statehouse steps in order
to calm the fears of the Chillicothe citizens.
 The new state house was short lived and was razed in 1852 due to
its inadequacies for the growing governmental offices. Oddly
enough, locals always referred to it as the Constitutional Court
House and it wasn't until it was razed that it became known as the
state house. The capital moved to Columbus, Ohio, and the first
capitol building fell to the auction block. For the tidy sum of
$75, William McClintock bought the stone building and tore it down.
The great fire of 1852 had occurred and he profited from the block
as residents rebuilt their foundations with the stone.
Today, a near replica exists in the Chillicothe Gazette Building, which houses
the local newspaper. Incorporated in the building one can find two well marked
stones from the original capitol building. The new Ross County Court House also
has a stone from its original predecessor. The Ohio Bicentennial Commission
has erected a historical marker at the corner of the courthouse commemorating
the first Ohio state capitol building. Chillicothe celebrated the Ross County
Bicentennial in 1998 and, rapidly approaching is Ohio's Bicentennial (in 2003)
where the focus of the state will be at Ohio's first capital and Adena (the mansion
of Ohio's sixth governor, Thomas Worthington).
To gain a sense of history, one must visit the Ross County Historical Museum,
48 West Fifth Street, which holds a realistic diorama built by William C. Thorpe
of Chillicothe in the time period of Ohio's statehood. There you will also find
the Ohio Constitutional table built by William Guthrie, where all the delegates
signed the document making Ohio the 17th state of the union. Contact the Historical
Society at 740-772-1936 for times and schedules.
Three excellent references to Chillicothe as Ohio's first capital
are Chillicothe's Publick Ground by local author Patricia Fife
Medert, The Frontiersmen by Alan Eckert, Chillicothe,
Ohio's First Capital Sesquicentennial Souvenir Program. 1946.
You may also find interesting details about Chillicothe's past at
their website: http://www.scioto.org/ross/his-tory/rosshistory.html.
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