Jennifer Donnetz, age il, of Bowling Green, Ohio, for her question:
HOW DID OHIO RECEIVE ITS NAME?
Ohio, called the Buckeye State, became the 17th state in the United States in 1803. The first man to see the region was a French explorer named Robert Cavelier, sieur de LaSalle. As he sailed down the Ohio River 219 years ago in 1669, he gave the new territory the same name as the river: the Iroquoian Indian word "oyo" or "o he yo," which meant "beautiful."
The popular `Buckeye` name comes from the many buckeye trees that grow everywhere in the state.
After LaSalle, only a few hunters and trappers visited the area until Celoron de Blainville entered the territory in 1749 from Montreal and claimed all the territory for France. In the same year it was claimed by the Ohio Company, a group of Virginians who had an English grant for the land on both sides of the river.
The English governor ordered a fort built at what is now Pittsburgh, Pa. The French captured it and named it Fort Duquesne. A young Major George Washington tried to recapture it, and thus started the French and Indian War. It ended with an English victory and the English received the land after the Treaty of Paris in 1763.
In 1787 the U.S. Congress passed an ordinance that set up a government to rule the Northwest Territory, which included Ohio. The next year the Ohio Company started the first permanent settlement at Marietta.
In 1796 an American by the name of Moses Cleaveland brought a group of settlers to the shores of Lake Erie and what was called the Western Reserve. It had been "reserved" by the state of Connecticut at the time the 13 original states gave up their claims in the territory.
Many people came to the Ohio region about this time and many new towns were established. By 1799 the population was so large that an organized government had to be established at Cincinnati.
In 1801 a constitutional convention met and on March 1, 1803, Ohio was admitted to the Union. Chillicothe was the first capital. It moved to Zanesville in 1808, back to Chillocothe in 1812 and finally to Columbus in 1816.
When the Civil War started in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 Union volunteers. About 30,000 men from Ohio answered his call. Ohio was a strongly anti slavery state.
There were more than 50 Union generals from Ohio and some played leading roles in the army's final victory. The commander of the Union forces, Ulysses S. Grant, was born at Mount Pleasant and spent his boyhood in Ohio.
In 1863 the Confederate General John Morgan led a raid into Ohio but he was captured in Columbiana County. After that, Confederate forces made no other invasion attempt into Ohio.
During the early years of the 1900s, Ohio built up its great iron and steel, pottery, glass, rubber and machinery industries. Manufacturing slowly replaced agriculture as the leading state industry.