A large portion of the subsequent history of Rome would no doubt be lacking in interest, at least among the younger readers, were it not for the legends of the laying of the foundations of the Eternal City, mythical and credulity-testing though they may be. The story of the abandoned Romulus and Remus being suckled and reared to vigorous youthhood by a female wolf may have been mercifully invented to soften the memory of the wife of some guardian who had the two boys in charge.  The narration of the just-before-dawn vigil of the two youths on the two convenient hills, ''looking out for signs," and seeing diverse numbers of vultures, leading to the straining of their fraternal relations, some seven hundred years before the Christian Era, may have been an early form of the snipe hunting expeditions of, say, A. D. 1850, and down to the present day, among the youths of Columbus and outlying country.
     The building of the walls of Rome by Romulus, and the contempt shown toward the architect  and his work by Remus, who leped over them and who was chased thence and founded the City of Rheims, according to his own ideas of municipal architecture, may be readily toned down to a foolish boyish quarrel of some minor detail, and the story of the Sabine women is an old-new-endless one of the selection fo the lovliest.  Young ladies being scarce in Rome, the boys over there no doubt challenged the Sabine youths to play a prehistoic game of baseball.  Their sweethearts came out, of course, to cheer and encourage them, but when the Roman Senators shut out the Sabine Slashers in the ninth inning, with a score of 21 to 0, not only the game was lost, but the girls also, and they naturally clung to the Senators ever after.
      This may not be the exact narration of the events in their order, but they would naturally and perfectly furnish the historical raw material out of which the classic poets formed the finished story.
     But in any event, and without regard to the accuracy of detail, they told about the first people and the first things and the original methods, without

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which in some form the rest of the story - called in courtesy History - would be desperately dry reading and spiritless.  One must know of the beginning before one can teach the lesson of successive comparisons in the progress of events.  The great things of the present are the grown-up children and grand children of the comparatively little things of the past.  We must know some thing of the parent before we can properly estimate the child, as well as something about the child before we can fully analyze the matured individual, or, analyzing backward, properly estimate the progenitor.  The very mysticism and glamour of the classic poets which surround the practical beginnings of Rome enhance the interest, to most readers, in the story of its subsequent progress.  So also as to Columbus.

Christopher Gist, Agent of the Ohio Company.

     The first white men to visit the present site of Columbus were Christopher Gist, of Maryland, and George Croghan, an English trader, piloted by one Andrew Montour, a French-Indian half breed of the Senecas, no doubt, some time during the winter of 1750-1751.  At, and preceding this period, the English colonies of the east and northeast were deeply interested in curbing, and eventually eliminating, the Canadian French influences.  This was especially true with an association of Virginia and Maryland planters and English merchants, who realized the vast importance of keeping the French traders, and French influence of all kinds, out of that vast territory lying south of the present Canadian line.
     These men probably never thought of what the future had in store in the shape of trade and commerce, exceeding for a single business day from nine to three all the trade then being contended for during an entire year.  A long line of English trading posts were being stretched across the practically unknown continent parallel with the 38th degree, and Mr. Gist was the active agent of this association, with well-nigh unlimited discretionary powers.
     One of these English trading posts was established at the point of the junction of the Great Miami and Loranaie creek, upon an extensive prairie, in 1749, and was named Pickawillany, English improvement on the Pickqua lines, a tribe of Indians.  It was to visit this post that Gist and his companions made the trip now under discussion.  It was, in fact, the first point of English occupation within the present boundaries of Ohio, and here the English traders throughout the entire trading belt met and conferred between themselves and their Indian friends and allies.
   On Oct. 31, 1750, Gist set out from Old Town, on the Potomac, in Maryland, and crossed the Alleghenies, following the usual route of travel to the Ohio river that seems to have existed from time immemorial.  Crossing the upper Ohio, he made his way to the then Indian village at the forks of the Muskingum, where the city of Coshocton (Goshocking, the Place of the Owls), now stands, much more pacific and inviting than its Indian name would portend.  

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     From that point Gist and his two companions came westward, holding conferences in the Indian villages at Wacatomika, Black Hand (so named for the black print of an enormous human hand on a high rock overhanging the Pataskala river, through which a tunnel of the Columbus, Newark and Zanesville electric road is pierced), where an Indian potentate was located; thence to the present Buckeye lake, then little more than a great sedgy morass, full of fish, which the naked Indian children waded in and caught with their hands, which they skirted, coming on to the High Bank, where they crossed by canoe ferry to the Indian town or village that occupied a portion of what is now the west side.
     Here a conference was held in February, 1751.  Later the three travelers went down the Scioto and the Ohio to the mouth of the Great Miami, up which they journeyed to Pickawillany, where a prolonged conference was held, under the direction of Gist, between the English traders and the tribal representatives of the Weas, Pickqualines, Miamis, Piankeshaws, and other sub-nations contiguous thereto, and a treaty, practically of alliance, was agreed upon, the French flag, which had for years floated over the chief tepee of Pickawillany, was hauled down and British sovereignty was recognized.
     Under the terms of the treaty the town rapidly rose in importance. Gist recording in his journal that it was the strongest town in the western country, as well as the most important one.
     But the French government in Canada was not in the dark as to the progress of events on Riviere a la Roche, or Rock River, as the Miami was called, but was kept constantly informed by their Indian and half-breed spies. So it came about, a few years later, that, in an unexpected moment, the combined French and more northern Indians swooped down upon Pickawillany, and the ''coming" emporium of the great Ohio wilderness went up in smoke and flame, and it was blotted off the map.  But this part of the story belongs not to a Columbus history, but to the more comprehensive history of the state and its parent, the Northwest Territory.

Enter Mr. James Smith.

     There may have been other men at that period (between 1751 and 1760) who threaded the mazes of the then Columbus, but history fails to present another than James Smith, who has held a captive among the Indians west of the Junction of the two rivers and who hunted and trapped along the rivers and their principal tributaries in this territory.  Mr. Smith's personal narration is full of interest and gives one a fine insight into the character of the Indian nomads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  A complete resume of his graphic narrative appears in an appropriate chapter devoted to early reminiscences and later day historical gossip of the Buckeye capital.
     In the meantime, James Smith must rest upon his laurels of being the second early comer of the white race into the future capital, illuminated with this brief description, written by him, of the then site of the present city: ''From the mouth of Olentangy (applied to the Big Darby), on the east side.

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of Scioto, up to the carrying place (in Marion county), there is a large body of first and second rate land, and tolerably well watered.  The timber is ash, sugar tree, walnut, locust, oak and beech."  This no doubt the first written description of the point at the neighboring upon the lands on which the city of Columbus stands.

The First Permanent Residence

     The

Some of Sullivant's Compatriots.

Among

The First White Woman.

     The first white woman born east of the Scioto river and in Columbus proper was Keziah Hamlin, who afterward married David Brooks, proprietor of "The White Horse Tavern," one of the famous early hostelries of the Ohio capital.  She was born Oct. 16, 1804, in a log cabin which stood upon what is now the site of Hoster's brewery.

[PORTRAIT of MRS. KEZIAH (HAMLIN) BROOKS]

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     At that time there lived in the vicinity a sub-tribe of Wyandots, who were on friendly terms with the scattered white settlers.  They had a great fondness especially for Mother Hamlin's corn bread, and were in the habit of paying the family informal calls and helping themselves informally to whatever they might find in the larder.  The only explanation they offered was to leave with Mrs. Hamlin the finest cuts and quarters of venison, so that if she and the lord of the household were left temporarily short on bread they found themselves long on meat.  While this kind of exchange was one-sided, the Hamlin firm never had occasion to complain that they had been cheated.
     When little Keziah came the Wyandots took great interest in the little pale face and never lost an opportunity to admire her in a sort of ecstacy of silence, punctuated with grunts of satisfaction; and the larger she grew, and when she began to toddle about on the dirt floor of the cabin, their admiration knew no bounds, and then and there the Trilby inspiration took shape and form
     One busy day, when Father Hamlin was on a journey to the mill and Mother Hamlin was busy with her household cares and duties and Baby Hamlin slept like a top in her sugar trough cradle, a delegation of Wyandots in gala attire invaded the cabin and, instead of depleting the larder, depleted the cradle and marched Indian file, the chief leading, with Keziah in his arms, and disappeared in the direction of the Indian village, in the dense forest at the bend of the Scioto, where the Harrisburg bridge now spans the river.
     It would be impossible to depict the feelings of the mother.  She simply endured the terrors of the situation for hours, which passed like slow-paced centuries, buoyed up only by the faint hope that the children of the forest were merely playing some good natured prank on her.  Realizing the uselessness of pursuit, nothing was left her but to cling to hope and endure and long for the return of her husband.  Hours before his return (far past nightfall) the Indians returned, with their tiny captive smiling and cooing in the arms of the bronzed chieftain, and she too was resplendent in gala attire.  In addition to the other gay outfitting, her feet were encased in a pair of dainty and artistically beaded buckskin moccasins.
     The Wyandot manteau and moccasin makers, for the purpose of giving the mother a happy surprise, had unceremoniously carried the child to their own town, where she could be fitted out and become a Wyandot Princess, and as such they had evidently adopted her before returning her.  For many years Keziah retained the moccasins and trinkets, and told the story of that adventure to her children and her children's children.  Finally the younger generations a few years ago unconsciously imbibed iconoclastic ideas, and the relics disappeared piecemeal.
     Keziah Hamlin married David Brooks, who came from Massachusetts and settled in Columbus on the 19th of December, 1822.  She died Feb. 4, 1875, leaving three sons and two daughters.  One of the sons, David W. Brooks, was prominent in business and banking circles in the city.  Herbert Brooks, a grandson, is prominent in the same circles in the Columbus of 1909.

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The First State Senator.

     The first year after his arrival Culbertson was elected to the Ohio legislature, being the first member elected from the Franklin county section of Ross county in the senate of the first general assembly of the state in 1803.

The First Mill West of the River.

     The first mill was located in the Franklinton section in 1797 or 1798.  It was a public utility and the first instance of public ownership, hereabouts at least.  At the people helped to build it and all the people helped to run it.  The contemporaneous chronicler describes it as "a kind of a hand mill upon which they (the inhabitants) generally ground their corn; some pounded it or boiled it."  The latter were probably opposed to public ownership.  "Occasionally," says the pioneer historian, "a trip was made to the mill at Chillicothe."  One may easily conjecture why this long trip to mill, through the wilderness, was made.  The housewife was expecting company, no doubt some Revolutionary hero or some grand dame, coming from the east perhaps, and she wanted fine meal to enable her to furnish her guests with tempting johnny cake, and perchance the guests were coming from ''Ole Ferginia," and what would be more to their liking than the peerless crackling shortened corn dodger, heightened to the seventh gastronomic heaven with the pale ambered and divinely saccharined maple molasses!  It was worth an hundred mile round trip to secure the ingredients for such a feast.

The First Mill East of the River.

     "In 1790 or 1800 Robert Balentine," says the early historian, "erected a poor kind of a mill" on the Run, near the present line of Gay street, but whether east or west of Gay street it is not stated.  The Run, however, is not there at the present writing.

The First Up-River Mill.

     "At about the same period John D. Rush erected," in the frank language of the historian, "an inferior mill on the Scioto a short distance above Franklinton."  They were however, both poor concerns and soon fell into ruins, and clearly enough the "sound of the grinding" was not only "low," but the grasshopper had no musical rival to divide the honors with him; but not for long.

The First Horse Mill.

      Then, as a last resort, some pioneer, whose name is lost to immortal fame, erected a horse mill and managed to eke out sufficient corn meal to meet the demand of the growing metropolis.

The First Successful Mill.

     Then it was, in 1805, that at a point near Worthington, Colonel James Kilbourn erected a mill imbued, as it were, with the spirit of the eighteenth

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century.  It was a mill built on modern lines and principles and turned out wheat and buckwheat flour and corn meal in a steady stream and started Franklin county on the road to greatness, and after this there were mills and mills erected on all the streams in the vicinity of Columbus; men laid by a competence for themselves; became more than honest millers - leading citizens of county and state, whose names will continue to grace and ornament the general local annals for decades, and in many instances for centuries yet to come, as may be well and truly said of the proprietors of Carpenter's Mill on the Whetstone, Dyer's Mill on Darby, Nelson's on Alum creek and others contemporaneous with them in the first decade and the first half of the second decade of the century.

The First Mercantile Venture.

     Nearly all, if not all, beginnings are small, and in accordance with that recognized law it is to be expected that the first things are small, although when we contemplate them in their fully developed form it staggers our credulity to think of them as merely tiny bubbles on the ocean of mercantile adventure.
     Mr. James Scott in 1798 or 1799, the precise date being in doubt, opened "the first small store in Franklinton, which added much to the convenience of the settlers."  It was certainly a great convenience to the Franklinton housewife, since she could get breakfast, wash the dishes, tidy up the cabin, go to Mr. Scott's store, purchase three yards of brown muslin and a skein of thread, return home and cut out and make a shirt for her husband, get dinner and supper meantime, and have the garment finished in time for her husband to wear down to "the public square," where the men folks met and told hunting stories in the gloaming of the forest twilight and on contemporaneous subjects, while her ears tingled, a la telepathy, at the praises of the young men touching the neat hemming and hemstitching on the shirt aforesaid.
     The next store, and probably a larger one, was started by Robert Russell, Esquire, in 1803.  So far as can be learned, there are now no direct successors to those merchant princes of the then unbuilt city.

The First Unseen Terror.

     This was what was variously designated "ague, ager, fever'n-nager, chills and fever," and now recorded in the books are "malaria" or "malarial fever."  The original, however, could have gotten in its work on the pioneers even if it had been unnamed.

The First Capital Execution.

     The first execution in the county, and within the suburbs of the present city, was that of Shateyaronyah, Anglicized into Leather Lips, a celebrated Wyandot chief and philosopher.  The account was originally recorded by Otway Curry, the poet and magazine writer of the first half of the nineteenth

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century, and from which his nephew, Colonel William L. Curry, a valiant cavalry officer in the civil war and present pension commissioner of Ohio, furnishes the following tragically interesting synopsis:

The Doomed Wyandot.

     "The great northern family of Indian tribes which seems to have been originally embraced in the generic term Iroquois consisted, according to some writers, of two grand divisions - the eastern and western.  In the eastern division were included in five nations or Maquas (Mingos), as they were commonly called by the Algonquin tribes, and in the western the Yendots, or Wyandots (nick-named Hurons by the French) and three or four other nations, of whom a large proportion are now entirely extinct.  The Yendots, after a long and deadly warfare, were nearly exterminated by the Five Nations about the middle of the seventeenth century.  Of the survivors part sought refuge in Canada, where their descendants still remain; a few were incorporated among the different tribes of the conquerors, and the remainder, consisting chiefly of the Tionontates, retired to Lake Superior.  In consequence of the disastrous wars in which they afterwards became involved with other powerful nations of the northwestern region, they again repaired to the vicinity of their old hunting grounds.  With this remnant of the original Huron or Wyandot nation were united some scattered fragments of other broken-up tribes of the same stock, and though comparatively few in number they continued for a long period to assert successfully the right of sovereignty over the whole extent of country between the Ohio river and the lakes as far west as the territory of the Piankishaws, or Miamis, whose eastern boundary was probably an irregular line drawn through the valley of the Great Miami (Shimeamee) and the Ottawah-se-pee, or Maumee river of Lake Erie.  The Shawanees and the Delawares, it is believed, were occupants of a part of the fore-mentioned country merely by sufferance of the Wyandots, whose right of dominion seemed never to have been called in question excepting by the Mingoes or Five Nations.  The Shawanees were originally powerful and always warlike. Kentucky received its name from them in the course of their migrations between their former place of residence on the Suanee river, adjacent to the southern sea-coast, and the territory of the Yendots in the North.  The name (Kentuckee) is compounded from the Shawanees and signifies a "land or place at the head of a river."
     ''The chosen residence of the Wyandots was at an early period, as it was later, on the waters of the Saun-dus-tee, or Sandusky.  Though greatly reduced in numbers, they have, perhaps, attained a higher degree of civilization than any other tribe in the vicinity of the northwestern lakes.  For the following specimen of the Wyandot language and for the greater part of the statements given above we are indebted to the Archaeologia Americana.

The Wyandot Vocabulary.

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house - Arthur O'Harra contractor.  These buildings remined in use until the county seat was removed to Columbus, in 1824

First Justices of the Place.

First Congressman Voted For.

First Military Execution.

     In June, 1813, while the Ohio army of the war of 1812-1815 lay at Franklinton, a soldier, William Fish by name, was shot under sentence of court martial on the charge of desertion and threatening the life of his captain.  Three other soldiers, whose names were not recorded by the original historian, were also condemned to death, but were pardoned by Gen. William Henry Harrison.  One, however, was placed on a coffin by a newly opened grave, blind folded, and left under the impression that he was to be shot along with Fish.  Imagining that the firing squad had missed him, he was restored to nervous  

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equilibrium only when the general's pardon, with an admonition, was read to him by an adjutant.

The First Wedding.

     The first nuptial ceremony celebrated in Columbus occurred in 1814, the high contracting parties being Mr. George B. Harvey and Miss Jane Armstrong.  A week or two later, another couple followed suit.  They were Mr. Joseph Dello, and Miss Polly Collett.  Rev. James Hoge was the officiating minister.  The weddings took place on the east side of the river.  There were possibly, previous to this date, weddings on the west side of the river, but there are no attainable records thereof.

The First Bank Established.

     The first bank to be established in Columbus began business in 1816.  In that year Columbus was first incorporated, fuller mention of which appears elsewhere.

The First Ohio Gazetter.

     This valuable publication by John Kilbourne appeared in 1816, being duly copyrighted by the author.  So great was the demand for the work that it went through six editions in three years.  He died in Columbus in 1831.

The First Almanac.

     William Lusk in 1817 published the first almanac at Columbus.  To this he added a complete roster of the public officers of the state, by counties, making a pamphlet of sixty-four pages and bestowed on the work the title of ''Ohio Register and Western Calendar," which he copyrighted and published for a number of years.  He died in Dayton in 1855.  In his Register of 1821, he describes Franklinton as containing a post office, three taverns, a common school and an academy "in which are taught English, Grammar, Geography, Mensuration, Geometry, Trigonometry, Plane and Spherical Surveying, Navigation, Algebra, and Astronomy."  He was president, faculty and teacher, all in one, of the institution.
     He described Worthington as a town containing ''a post office, a printing office, four taverns, four mercantile stores, a college, a Masonic hall and a number of large manufactories for woolen clothes, hats, saddles, shoes, combs, etc."

A First Presidential Visit.

     In the latter part of August, 1817, President Monroe and suite passed through this county, on their return from Detroit after his northern tour of inspection of the public fortifications, etc. They were met at Worthington by the Franklin Dragoons, commanded by Captain Vance, and escorted to Columbus, where proper arrangements had been made for the reception; and the

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President was received in the state house, and welcomed to the capital by a neat and appropriate speech from Honorable Hiram M. Curry, then treasurer of state.  To which the President made a suitable reply, complimenting the ''infant city," as he called it, and its inhabitants.
     They traveled on horseback, and were generally escorted from one town to another by the military, or some distinguished citizens.  They rode fast, generally in a canter.  Mr. Monroe wore the old-fashioned, three-cornered, cocked hat - his dress otherwise was in plain, citizen style.  His face was effectually sunburnt from' exposure.
     This troop of dragoons was first organized in time of the war of 1812, and continued until 1832, or 1833, when they disbanded.  They were commanded by the following, successive captains: Joseph Vance, Abram J. McDowell, Robert Brotherton, P. H. Olmstead, Joseph McElvain and David Taylor.
     Captain Vance was a fine military officer, and was in the service, in different grades of office, during the greater part of the war.  He was among the early settlers of the county; married in Franklinton in 1805, and remained a resident of the county the balance of his life.  He was a surveyor and for many years the county surveyor; was one of the conspicuous citizens of his day, and highly respected.  He died in 1824.
     Captain McDowell was a military officer of portly and commanding appearance.  He was afterward promoted to the rank of colonel, which title he bore through life.  He was among the early settlers of the county, and held the office of clerk of the courts and county recorder many years.  He was after ward mayor of the city of Columbus.  Was a man of free and jovial disposition, and always had warm friends.  He died in the fall of 1844, in the fifty-fourth year of his age.
     Captain Brotherton was the third commander of this popular troop, and was, from that, promoted to the rank of colonel, which title he bore through life.  He was a native of Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, and came to Franklinton when a youth, and resided in this county ever after.  He married a daughter of Captain Kooken, a family of high respectability. He was of a mild and sociable disposition, and became very popular, apparently without an effort on his part.  He served two constitutional terms of four years each, as sheriff, and filled that critical and unpleasant office with peculiar ease and kindness, and was never charged with oppression.  He died in November, 1837, aged about forty-five years.
     Captain McElvain, like his predecessors in the command of the troops, was promoted to the rank of colonel in the Ohio militia, and bore the title of colonel through life.  He died suddenly on the 7th of February, 1858, at his residence in Worthington, aged about sixty-five years.  Colonel McElvain was one of the first residents of Franklin county.  He came here with his father and family, when he was a child, in the spring of 1798, and remained here ever since.  He was in turn farmer, merchant, hotel-keeper and public officer.  He was many years an assistant at the Ohio penitentiary.  He held the office of county treasurer four years, and was superintendent of the county infirmary a number of years, and discharged the duties of his office with kindness and urbanity.

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First Toll Bridge.

The First Pestilence.

First Court House East of the River.

     In 1824 the county seat was removed from Franklinton to Columbus and a commodious brick building and jail was erected at the spot where the great stone Temple of Justice on the block bounded by Mound and Fulton and High and Pearl streets now stands.

First Extension of High Street

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corresponding secretary, M. B. Bateman; treasurer, John W. Andrews; managers, Dr. I. G. Jones, John Burrn, John A. Lazell, John Fisher, Moses Jewett, John Miller and Leander Ransom.  The first county agricultural fair was held on the state fair grounds near Franklinton in October, 1851.  The first horticultural fair and exhibition was held Sept. 26, 1845.

The First Sale of Lots.

     The first sale of lots in the city of Columbus began on June 18, 1812, and continued as a public vendue for three days, and that they were disposed of at private sale.

The First State House.

     The old state house was built on the southwest corner of the Capitol Square in 1814.  A fuller description and an account of its destruction by fire appears elsewhere.

The First Stores.

     The first stores in Columbus, say from 1812 to 1818, were opened in the following order and conducted or "Kept" by the following persons, respectively:  Belonging to the Washington Manufacturing Company, kept by Joel Buttles in a small brick building on west end of lot later covered by the Broadway Exchange.  Belonging to McLene & Green, in a log cabin on Rich street.  Three connected cabins, kept as a bakery and place of entertainment by Christian Heyl.

The First Taverns.

     The first tavern was kept by Volney Payne in a two-story brick on the lot afterward occupied the Johnston building, Volney Payne, John Collett, John McIlvain, Robert Russell and James Robinson respectively, conducted this house until 1844.  In 1844 Daniel Kooser opened a tavern on Front street, south of State and a Mr. McCollum opened one on Front, north of Broadway.  The Franklin, afterward called the Nagle, was kept by Christian Heyl, and several smaller hotels, incident to a growing town of that ay, were kept, but without special designation.
     Later, in 1815, David S. Broderick opened the "Columbus Inn" in large frame building on the corner of Town and High.  In 1816 James B. Gardiner opened a tavern on Friend (Main) street, just west of High.  Mr. Broderick having retired form the hotel business in 1818, Gardiner took charge of the stand, corner of Town and High, and called it "The Rose Tree," with the Biblical quotation: "The wilderness shall blossom as the rose.."  The stand for a time was known as the "Franklin House" and the "City House," and possibly was otherwise designated.  When Mr. Gardiner removed from Friend (Main) street to take charge of "The Rose Tree," (Judge) Jarvis Pike

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took charge of the former stand and renamed it "The Yankee Tavern."  About 1815-16 there was a somewhat famous ''place" yclept ''The War Office," where, between drinking and carousing and quarreling and fighting, Squire Shields, who was among the first justices of the peace, was enabled to run a pretty heavy police docket at times.

The First School and School Teachers.

     The first school taught in Columbus was in a cabin that stood on the public square (teacher's name not now known); then succeeded as teachers, in 1814-15, and so on, Uriah Case, John Peoples, W. T. Martin, a Mr. Whitehill, Joseph Olds (afterward a distinguished lawyer and member of congress), Dr. Peleg Sisson (while acquiring his profession), Samuel Bigger (afterward governor of Indiana), Rudolph Dickinson (for a number of years a member of the board of public works and member of congress), Daniel Bigelow, Orange Davis, a Mr. Christie, Rev. Mr. Labare, Cyrus Parker, H. N. Hubbell, Andrew Williams, and a number of others not now recollected, who were all teachers of common subscription schools in Columbus before the introduction of the present free school system.

The First Census.

     In the spring of 1815 the census of the town was taken by James Mar shal, Esquire, and amounted to about seven hundred. By this time there were some half dozen or more of stores, among which were those of Alexander Morrison, Joel Buttles, Henry Brown, Delano & Cutler and J. & R. W. McCoy; and a printing office issuing a weekly paper.

The First Lawyers.

     The first lawyers to locate in Columbus were David Smith, Orris Parish, David Scott and Gustavus Swan, about the year 1815.  Shortly after, succeeded John R. Parish, T. C. Flournoy, James K. Cory, William Doherty and others.
     Mr. Parish died in June, 1829, in the forty-third year of his age.  He was a man of vigorous mind and an able lawyer and legislator, and for a time quite popular.  But he had his frailties.
     Mr. Coty died the first day of January, 1827, in his twenty-ninth year.  He was a promising young lawyer from Cooperstown, New York, and had resided in Columbus some seven or eight years.
     On the same day Dr. Daniel Turney, a popular physician of Columbus, died from the effects of poison.
     Colonel Doherty was a native of Charleston, South Carolina, from whence he came to Ohio during the war of 1812, and took up his residence in Columbus in 1816.  He subsequently, in 1820, married a daughter of General McLene, and made Columbus his residence the balance of his life.  He possessed a turn of mind for public business, and, being a man of fine appearance.

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FACADE OF THE BROAD STREET BAPTIST TEMPLE,
Between Washington and Parsons Avenues, in the Mist of Fine Residences.

THE BROAD STREET METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
Broad and Washington Avenue, Built of Green Stone.

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The First Postoffice.

The First Market House.

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The First Corporation.

First Town Wit and Poet.

The First Incorporated Bank.

     The Franklin Bank of Columbus was incorporated by the act of the legislature Feb. 3, 1816, and on the first Monday of September, 1816, the first election of directors was held, the following being elected: Lucas Sullivant,

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James Kilbourne, John Kerr, Alexander Morrison, Abram I. McDowell, Joel Buttles, Robert Massie, Samuel Barr, Samuel Parsons, John Cutler, Robert W. McCoy, Joseph Miller and Henry Brown.
     Lucas Sullivant was chosen the first president, and his immediate successors were: Benjamin Gardiner, John Kerr, Gustavus Sevan.  The charter of the institution expired Jan. 1, 1843.

First Big Sensation.

     The first big sensation in banking, social and political circles occurred shortly after in the sudden disappearance of Benjamin Gardiner, the second president of the Franklin Bank, although it does not appear that he misapplied or carried off the money of others.  This gentleman, whose true name was Barzillai Gannett, had left his home and family in one of the eastern states under unfavorable circumstances and obtained an appointment by the name of Benjamin Gardiner as quartermaster in the army, and was stationed at Franklinton during the war.  He was grave and dignified in his appearance and manners and obtained a high reputation in the church and society generally, and married into a respectable connection in this county.  But, unfortunately for him, his history followed him, and to avoid a prosecution for bigamy he left clandestinely and was never heard of, except perhaps by a few confidential friends.

The First Cotton Yarn Mill.

     Colonel Jewett and Judge Hines erected a mill for spinning cotton yarns in 1821, run by horse power, on Front street, between Rich and Friend (Main) streets.  Later it was run by water power, and it continued for some year, but was never very successful.

The Woolen Factory.

     Ebenezer Thomas and others erected a woolen factory for carding, spinning and weaving at the corner of High and Noble streets.  This venture, too, was not a great success.

First Steam Sawmill.

     The first steam sawmill was erected in 1831-1832 by John Mellvain at the head of the Columbus branch of the Ohio canal.  It was only comparatively successful in a business sense.

The First Plow Factory.

     The first manufactory which was a success from the start was a plow factory and foundry established by Joseph Ridgeway in 1822.  This being the heart of a great agricultural district, this establishment possessed signal advantages.

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The First Addition.

     The town was originally laid out in 1812 and the plat regularly made and laid down.  The first addition was made to the original plat in 1814 by John McGown and called by him "South Columbus."  The surveyor and platter was John Shields.

The First Insurance Company.

     The Columbus Insurance Company was chartered by the legislature of 1832-33 and was known as the Columbus Insurance Company.  It continued in business less than  a score of years and went upon the shoals of failure in 1851.

First a City.

     Columbus was incorporated as a city by the act of February, 1834, and entered upon a vigorous growth and began to expand its boundaries in all directions as well as to take on the air and appearance of solidity.

The First Theater.

     In the fall of 1835 the first public play house or theater was opened.  It was a large frame building and was erected on the west side of High street, between Broad and Gay, and was opened "by a corps of dramatic performers. under the management of Messrs. Dean & McKinney," says the original chronicler.

The First Balloon Ascension.

     The first balloon ascension to be witnessed at Columbus was made on the 4th of July, 1842, from the state house grounds, in the presenceof a great concourse of people, gathered from a radius of thirty or forty miles, who came on horseback, in vehicles and on foot.  A Mr. Clayton of Cincinnati was the aeronaut.

The First State Bank Law.

     In February, 1845, what was known as the state banking law was passed by the legislature, and three banks were organized under it in the city during that year.

The First Railway Passenger Train.

     The first railway passenger train entered Columbus, coming in over that was then called the Columbus & Xenia Railroad, now a part of the Panhandle System of the Pennsylvania Railway Company.  It arrived on the 26th of February, 1850.

The First Museum.

     Mr. William T. Martin,writing of this interesting event, says: "In July, 1851, Captain Walcutt first opened his Museum in Columbus.  It then consisted.

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of only six or seven wax figures and a few paintings.  It for a time attracted as much attention and patronage as could be expected from so small a collection.  He has been since then constantly adding to it, until it now comprises over twenty good wax figures, two or three hundred specimens of beasts, birds, fossils and other curiosities and about one hundred fine oil paintings, presenting quite a respectable collection.  But those of our citizens who saw it or heard of it in its infancy are not aware of its improvements and do not seem to fully appreciate it."
     With 1858-1860 the "firsts" of the ancient era and regime ceased and determined, and the present forms are but the outgrowth and improvements upon those which have gone before, and in none more conspicuously than those forms appertaining to transportation, trade and travel, which appeared in its original forms in the Columbus & Xenia, Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati and the Ohio Central Railways of over fifty years ago.
     The present great system, more elaborately presented elsewhere, including the electric street railways, evolving from the earlier tramways or horse cars, and the great web of traction and interurban lines, is but the advanced growth from the earlier forms, some of them remoter than the middle of the nineteenth century.
     Instead of one steam railroad alone, as in 1850, bringing anually from eight thousand to twelve thousand visitors into the city, it now has eighteen steam roads in operation, and others in contemplation for the near future, with an average of one hundred and fifty passenger trains entering and leaving daily, and in touch with all the trunk lines more than three million two hundred and fifty thousand visitors enter the city annually.
     Ten electric lines in operation, radiating in every direction, bring in and carry out more passengers daily than arrive and depart over the steam roads, so that the passengers in and out annually by both systems reach eight million or ten million.

- END OF CHAPTER II.