Manchester: Ohio's Oldest Town

Manchester, Ohio, on the north bank of the Ohio River in Adams County, is one of the oldest American towns in the old Northwest Territory. Nathaniel Massie, a Virginia land surveyor and speculator, established Massie's Station here in seventeen ninety, making it the first permanent settlement in the Virginia Military District, the stretch of Ohio set aside to pay Revolutionary War veterans with land grants. Massie renamed the settlement Manchester in seventeen ninety-one, after his ancestral English city. Like other Ohio River towns in this stretch, Manchester became a crossing point on the Underground Railroad: with Kentucky directly across the water, the town was among the first stops for freedom-seekers entering Ohio, and local tradition holds that antislavery residents helped them on their way.