Worthington, Ohio , Connecticut in Ohio
Near Columbus, Ohio
Worthington, Ohio is a New England town that was picked up and moved to the frontier. In eighteen oh three, the Scioto Company, led by Connecticut minister James Kilbourn and thirty-eight New England proprietors, purchased sixteen thousand acres along the Olentangy River for roughly a dollar and a half an acre. Kilbourn platted the village in the style he knew from home: about one hundred sixty lots arranged around a central public square.
Within months of arrival, the settlers established the first Episcopal church in the Northwest Territory. The town was named for Thomas Worthington, a future Ohio governor. Today Worthington's historic district preserves the Federal and Greek Revival streetscape the Connecticut settlers built, and it remains one of the most intact examples of a deliberately transplanted New England community in the American Midwest.
