Rapid Growth of Warren County, Ohio

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The History of Warren County, Ohio

Rapid Growth of the County

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Transcription contributed by Martie Callihan 28 Oct 2004

Sources:
The History of Warren County Ohio
Part III, The History of Warren County
Chapter IV. Pioneer History
(Chicago, IL: W. H. Beers Co, 1882; reprint, Mt. Vernon, IN: Windmill Publications, 1992)
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The rapidity with which this region was populated and improved is well known. The rapid growth of Ohio had perhaps never been equaled in the history of the world by any State not possessing mines of the precious metals; of the whole State of Ohio, the growth of the Miami Valley was by far the most rapid; and of the Miami Valley, if we are allowed to judge from the imperfect

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census of the white male inhabitants twenty-one years old and upward, taken by the Tax-Listers in August. 1803, Warren County contained, the year it was organized, more inhabitants than Butler, Montgomery, Greene or Clermont— Clinton was not then formed—and stood among its neighbors second to Hamilton only. Below is given the number of white male inhabitants twenty-one years old and upward in the different counties of the Miami Valley, according to the census of the Tax-Listers, August. 1803:

Hamilton, 1,700; Warren. 854; Butler, 836; Montgomery, 526: Greene. 446; Clermont, 755.

Immigrants came in crowds. Stories of the wonderful fertility of the Miami lands were everywhere circulated in the older States. Some of the stories may have been extravagant, but there were well-attested facts that from hills four feet apart grew four or five stalks of corn one and a half inches in diameter and fifteen feet high, and each stalk producing two or three good ears; and that the first corn-fields at Columbia produced, under favorable circumstances, as high as 110 bushels to the acre. The first corn crop grown in the immediate vicinity of Lebanon was raised by Ichabod Corwin, and tended with oxen, after his horses had been stolen by the Indians; yet, though growing among stumps and roots the first year after the ground was cleared, and but imperfectly cultivated, it surprised him at husking time by yielding 100 bushels to the acre. Facts like these were enough to strike with astonishment the inhabitants of the Eastern and Middle States. They heard them, believed them and came West. Jerseymen, Pennsylvanians and Virginians floated down the Ohio in flat-boats or came with wagons, ox-carts or pack-horses, to find homes in Symmes' Purchase and in the Virginia Military Reserve. The reputation of the Miamis extended to Europe, and in Holland, Germany and Ireland, emigrants to America declared that they were going to "the Miamis."


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This page created 28 Oct 2004 and last updated 15 March, 2005
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