Editorial Reviews:
Travelers in Worthington, Ohio, might think they were in a New England town. Old brick buildings line the very edges of the sidewalk, and a picturesque village green is flanked by two church steeples. Like most frontier communities, it reflects the heritage of its founders. In New Englanders on the Ohio Frontier, Virginia and Robert McCormick examine the founding and development of Worthington to show how it reflects New England culture transplanted and reshaped by the western frontier. The founders of Worthington left a wealth of primary sources, which the McCormicks have mined to tell the town's story. Within nine months of Ohio statehood in 1803, the settlers surveyed the town, organized a subscription library and an Episcopal Church, provided temporary housing for one hundred settlers, and granted one the right to "keep a public house for the entertainment of travelers if any there should be". Within a few years Worthington had a newspaper advertising a farm for rent with a "tolerably comfortable cabin", a store offering "European and India Goods" in addition to domestic products, an academy offering students "Latin, Greek, or French" for $6.00 a term, and testimonials for the threshing machine, invented by a local farmer, that would "thrash forty-five sheaves in five minutes". Despite Indian alarms during the War of 1812, failure to secure the seat of the state capital, and the economic depression that followed the banking collapse of 1819, Worthington prospered and grew. This case study of one community provides a perspective from which historians can better understand the process of westward migration and frontier settlement.
Customer Reviews:
 A comprehensive, lively history from primary sources
NEW ENGLANDERS ON THE OHIO FRONTIER is a witty and scholarly chronicle about migration to Ohio in 1802 for 41 families (settlers, not speculators) from Connecticut and Massachusetts. The McCormicks have used an unusually rich store of primary data to document the transformation of life in Ohio. Into the wilderness these settlers came with an elegant town plat which included a village green, Episcopal church, a school, and a subscription library, and within 10 years attained material culture which matched or surpassed that left in the Northeast. This case study ends in 1836 just after Worthington's incorporation. The McCormicks are scholars who write beautifully and this very accessible, colorful history ends too soon. The reader is primed for a sequel. Fascinating and scholarly study of local history.
"New Englanders on the Ohio Frontier" is more than a history of the founding and settlement of Worthington, Ohio, and subsequently, its impact on the development of Columbus, Ohio. It is the fascinating study of how migration into the Ohio frontier was not accomplished by adventurous individuals in buckskin, but by a well-organized and well-led company of settlers from Connecticut and Massachusetts with a definite purpose in mind. It demonstrates how their New England culture was transplanted into the Ohio wilderness and how it continues to influence the modern city. Virginia E. and Robert W. McCormick have written a scholarly but very readable text on local history. I highly recommend it on many levels. Paul Watkins, Worthington, Ohio
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