Manchester, Ohio marker
The man who founded Manchester, Ohio is also credited with the founding of 13 other early settlements of Ohio.
Nathaniel Massie was born in Goochland County, Va. on Dec. 28, 1763. He was a surveyor of the wilderness known as the Northwest Territory.
Massie eventually moved to Kentucky to farmland owned by his father in 1783 and was responsible for founding some of the earlier communities within the Virginia Military District.
In 1790, Massie founded what is now known as Manchester. At the time of the founding, it was called Massie’s Station. This became his base to survey other lands and in 1796, he founded what is now known as Chillicothe, Ohio.
Massie later served as a delegate to Ross County, Ohio during the 1802 Ohio Constitutional Convention. He was a leader of the Jeffersonian faction that supported Ohio becoming a state. He was also a presidential elector for Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
From 1804-1808, Massie was a trustee of Ohio University before becoming a member of the general assembly and the first president of the Ohio Senate.
He served during the War of 1812, having led troops through battle. In 1813, however, he contracted pneumonia and died at the age of 49.
Massie is buried in Grandview Cemetery in Ross County, Ohio.
In 2003, the Ohio Bicentennial Commission, Tall Stacks, Inc. and the Ohio Historical Society erected an historical marker in Manchester, Ohio.
That inscription reads: Manchester was founded in 1791 by Nathaniel Massie as a base to survey the land warrants of American Revolutionary War soldiers in the Virginia Military District. This bank of the Ohio River provided a secure site for the last civilian stockade built in Ohio. The natural protection of this fortification included marshland to the west and north and the river on the south. The nearby three islands provided safe place for retreat in dangerous circumstances and also supplied an area to raise food in its rich bottomlands. The invention of the steam-powered paddle wheel boat allowed the river to become the city’s main source of shipping and commerce in the nineteenth century. Manchester was an important port of call for provisions; the export of agricultural products: and the manufacture of goods such as pottery, furniture, and leather goods.
(Information for this article was provided by Danny Weddle.)
