Tag: Columbus OH

Wikipedia says: Columbus is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Columbus is the county seat of Franklin County.

Columbus originated as numerous Native American settlements on the banks of the Scioto River. Franklinton, now a city neighborhood, was the first white settlement, laid out in 1797. The city was founded in 1812, at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers, and laid out to become the state capital.

The city was named for Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. The city assumed the function of state capital in 1816 and county seat in 1824.
The city of Columbus was named after 15th-century Italian explorer Christopher Columbus at the city’s founding in 1812. It is the largest city in the world named for the explorer, who sailed to and settled parts of the Americas on behalf of Isabella I of Castile and Spain.

Before the abolition of slavery in the Southern United States in 1863, the Underground Railroad was active in Columbus; led, in part, by James Preston Poindexter. Poindexter arrived in Columbus in the 1830s and became a Baptist preacher and leader in the city’s African-American community until the turn of the century.

During the Civil War, Columbus was a major base for the volunteer Union Army. It housed 26,000 troops and held up to 9,000 Confederate prisoners of war at Camp Chase, at what is now the Hilltop neighborhood of west Columbus. Over 2,000 Confederate soldiers remain buried at the site, making it one of the North’s largest Confederate cemeteries. North of Columbus, along the Delaware Road, the Regular Army established Camp Thomas, where the 18th U.S. Infantry organized and trained.