Where Was Ohio’s First Capital?

Chillicothe, Ohio, was the state’s first capital—from 1803-1810—and then it became Ohio’s third capital from1812-1816. GenealogyBank has that early period of “The Buckeye State’s” history covered with four Chillicothe newspapers from 1801 to 1839.

Wait— Chillicothe was Ohio’s first and third capital?

Why did the capital of Ohio change so much?

In the 1800s Ohio’s politicians could not agree on where the capital of the state should be located. It alternated between Chillicothe and Zanesville, and finally in 1812 the state’s politicians settled upon a compromise and chose Columbus as Ohio’s new capital.

However, there was a problem. The city of Columbus did not yet exist—it was simply a heavily-forested area in the center of the state. But where there is a will, there is a way—and the city born of compromise was organized, populated and became the established capital city of Ohio that we know today.

Read about life in Chillicothe, Ohio’s first capital city—and find the obituaries and articles about your ancestors, as well as news stories about the political infighting of that day, in GenealogyBank’s Ohio Newspaper Archives.

You can search all four of GenealogyBank’s Chillicothe, Ohio newspapers on one search page.

Or, you can search each newspaper for genealogy records independently. The titles in the below list are active links; click on any one to take you directly to that specific newspaper’s page where you can search for articles about your ancestry by surname, dates and more.