A BRIEF HISTORY of the STATE OF OHIO When the first Europeans began to arrive in North America, Native Americans (also known as American Indians) participated in the fur trade. When the Iroquois confederation depleted the beaver and other game in the New York region, they launched a war known as the Beaver Wars, destroying or scattering the contemporary inhabitants of the Tennessee region. The Eries along the shore of Lake Erie were virtually eliminated by the Iroquois in the 1650s during the Beaver Wars. Thereafter, the Ohio lands were claimed by the Iroquois as hunting grounds. Ohio was nearly uninhabited for several decades. Population pressure from expanding European colonies on the Atlantic coast compelled several groups of Native Americans to relocate to the Ohio Country by the 1730s. From the east, Delawares and Shawnees arrived, and Wyandots and Ottawas from the north. Miamis lived in what is now western Ohio. Mingos were those Iroquois who migrated west into the Ohio lands. British military occupation in the region contributed to the outbreak of Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763. Ohio Indians participated in that war until an armed expedition in Ohio led by Colonel Henry Bouquet brought about a truce. Another military expedition into the Ohio Country in 1774 brought Lord Dunmore's War to a conclusion. During the American Revolutionary War, Native Americans in the Ohio Country were divided over which side to support. For example, the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket and the Delaware leader Buckongahelas sided with the British, while Cornstalk (Shawnee) and White Eyes (Delaware) sought to remain friendly with the rebellious colonists. American frontiersmen often did not differentiate, however, between friendly and hostile Indians. Cornstalk was killed by American militiamen, and White Eyes may have been. One of the most tragic incidents of the war — the Gnadenhutten massacre of 1782 — took place in Ohio. With the American victory in the Revolutionary War, the British ceded claims to Ohio and its territory in the West as far as the Mississippi River to the United States. Between 1784 and 1789, claims to Ohio territories were also ceded to the United States by the states of Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut. After Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, settlement of Ohio began with the founding of Marietta by the Ohio Company of Associates. It was formed by a group of American Revolutionary War veterans, who with their families composed much of the first generation of settlers. The Miami Company (also referred to as the "Symmes Purchase") managed settlement of land in the southwestern section. The Connecticut Land Company administered settlement in the Connecticut Western Reserve in present-day Northeast Ohio. Migrants came from New York and especially New England, where there had been a growing hunger for land as population increased. Most moved to Ohio by wagon and stagecoach, sometimes traveling part of the way by barges on the Mohawk River. Farmers who first settled in western New York sometimes moved on to one or more locations in Ohio in their lifetimes, as new lands kept opening to the west. As time went on and Ohio's population numbered 45,000, by December 1801, Congress determined that the population was growing rapidly and Ohio could begin the path to statehood. The assumption was the territory would have in excess of 60,000 residents by the time it became a state. Congress passed the Enabling Act of 1802 that outlined the process for Ohio to seek statehood. The residents convened a constitutional convention. On February 19, 1803, President Jefferson signed an act of Congress that approved Ohio's boundaries and constitution. Congress did not pass a specific resolution formally admitting Ohio as the 17th state. The current custom of Congress' declaring an official date of statehood did not begin until 1812. Although no formal resolution of admission was required, when the oversight was discovered in 1953, Ohio congressman George H. Bender introduced a bill in Congress to admit Ohio to the Union retroactive to March 1, 1803. At a special session at the old state capital in Chillicothe, the Ohio state legislature approved a new petition for statehood that was delivered to Washington, D.C. on horseback. On August 7, 1953 (the year of Ohio's 150th anniversary), President Eisenhower signed an act that officially declared March 1, 1803 the date of Ohio's admittance into the Union. WAYNE COUNTY When Ohio became a state and set about establishing its state and county jurisdictions, there were seventeen counties, including one named Columbiana. The present Wayne County was a township of Columbiana County, known as Killbuck Township. Gradually new counties were established, and a new Wayne County was authorized to set up its governing bodies in 1808 in what had been Killbuck Township. The final steps in this process were taken in 1812, and Wooster was made the county seat. Click your Back button to return to the page you just left to get here.