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#   Entered Union   Year Settled

17th       March 1, 1803    1788

 

Nickname

Buckeye State

 

Rank      Population

7th          11,485,910

 

Rank      Square Miles

34th       44,825

 

State Bird

Northern Cardinal

 

State Flower

Scarlet Carnation

Large White Trillium (state wild flower)

 

State Tree

Ohio Buckeye

 

State Motto

With God, all things are possible

 

The land we call Ohio today was part the Northwest Territory that the United States won by defeating the British in the Revolutionary War. Ohio was admitted into the Union as the 17th state in 1803. The state gets its name from the river that forms its southern border. Ohio is an Iroquois word meaning "great water."

 

The capital of the "Buckeye State" is Columbus, and, not surprisingly, the state tree is the buckeye. Highly populated, Ohio is situated between the Eastern Seaboard and the Midwest, and is known for the fact that eight presidents were either born or lived there.

 

William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison, the ninth U.S. president and, at 68, was the oldest to be inaugurated until Ronald Reagan in 1981 was sworn in at the age of 69. Harrison was the first president to die in office -- only 31 days after his inauguration.

As an Army officer and governor of the territory that is now Indiana and Illinois, he fought Indians and made harsh treaties with them, clearing the way for more westward settlement by whites. His military victories against Indians made him a hero to white Americans.

Before becoming president, he was an Ohio senator. Harrison's father, Benjamin Harrison, signed the Declaration of Independence. William Henry Harrison's grandson, also named Benjamin Harrison, became the 23rd president.

American Politics Forever Changed

With the election of 1840, American politics were forever changed. Although William Henry Harrison came from wealth and privilege, he was able to grab hold of the power of Andrew Jackson's image in his bid for the presidency in 1828.

Jackson had been the first president to come from poverty and was well known and admired as a rugged frontiersman and military man. How did this image affect the election of 1840 and beyond?

 

As Jackson's election showed, voters appreciated the prospect of a president who didn't come from wealth. He seemed more like them. In 1840, the Whig party and Harrison used this knowledge to create an image for Harrison. Harrison was successfully marketed as a Jackson-like figure, a rugged frontiersman and an accomplished military man. Did this image represent the "real" William Henry Harrison?

Not really. In reality, Harrison had left the Army after his victory at Thames River and before the end of the War of 1812, in order to go on a celebratory tour of parties and banquets in his honor in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. What did the 1840 election solidify (make secure) in political campaigns?

The 1840 election solidified the growing political influence of the West and the idea of politics as entertainment. Ever since then, elections have been won and lost on images and the attempt to deliver what the public wants.

 

Coal Powered a Revolution

Did you know that coal powered America's Industrial Revolution?

 

The second Industrial Revolution took place in the late 19th century. It was a period of social and economic change caused by technological advances and the switch in manufacturing from the work of humans to machines. This is called mechanization. At this time, coal was widely used to heat buildings. It was also burned to power steam engines used in manufacturing and locomotion and to power almost all of the innovations (new ideas, methods or devices) of the Industrial Revolution.

 

This film shows carloads of coal being loaded into vessels at the Erie Railroad docks in Cleveland, Ohio. Coal is still one of Ohio's most important mineral resources. In fact, the state's multibillion-dollar coal industry produced 22.4 million tons in 1999.

 

Historic Sauder Village

If you want to travel back in time and see what settlers in the 1830s looked like and how they lived, then you should visit Historic Sauder Village in Ohio. Complete with people dressed in period clothing and authentically restored buildings, Sauder Village was the idea of local farm boy Erie J. Sauder, founder of the Sauder Woodworking Company in 1934.

 

Sauder was inspired to create this village by his relatives, who had helped settle Ohio's Great Black Swamp. Although Ohio became a state in 1803, few European settlers considered entering the damp, forested wilderness of northwestern Ohio, known as the Great Black Swamp, until the 1830s.

 

It was then that people from the Mennonite and Amish religions decided to move to this region to start a new life away from the religious persecution in their European homeland. For years the Amish and the Mennonites, along with other settlers, worked, digging ditches and clearing away trees, until they had drained the Great Black Swamp and turned it into the state's best farmland.

 

Today, Sauder Village is a nonprofit living history museum and educational complex, with more than 30 buildings that show how life was in rural Ohio during the 19th century. Artisans in 11 craft shops demonstrate trades of that period: glassblowing, pottery making, spinning and weaving, broom making, woodworking, basket making, printing, and quilting.