Harmony Hill and the Father of Clermont County

The land around you was shaped in large part by one man: Major General William Lytle, known to generations of Ohioans as the Father of Clermont County. Lytle was a surveyor by profession, and in the years after the American Revolution he surveyed Ohio land as settlers began pushing west.

His homestead here, called Harmony Hill, stood at the center of a land portfolio that made him one of the most consequential figures in early Ohio. Lytle surveyed and acquired large tracts throughout Clermont County and played a direct role in organizing and settling the region. The Lytle family's influence echoed through Ohio public life for decades. The Harmony Hill homestead is where that story began, on a hillside in what was then the edge of the American frontier.