Franklinton, Columbus's First Neighborhood

Before Columbus existed, there was Franklinton. In seventeen ninety-seven, a Virginia surveyor named Lucas Sullivant laid out two hundred and twenty lots on the west bank of the Scioto River and named the settlement after Benjamin Franklin, who had died just seven years before. Franklinton predates Ohio statehood by six years and Columbus itself by more than a decade.

A flood submerged most of the town just one year after founding, which prompted Sullivant to move it to higher ground. During the War of eighteen twelve, Franklinton served as General William Henry Harrison's staging area for the Army of the Northwest, briefly making this small river town a hub of the young nation's military operations. Columbus absorbed Franklinton in eighteen fifty-nine, but the neighborhood still carries its original name.