Ohio History Journal

JOEL WRIGHT, CITY PLANNER

by ALFRED J. WRIGHT

Associate Professor of Geography, Ohio State University

The original plan for Columbus, "laid off by order of the Gen-

eral Assembly for the seat of Government for the State of Ohio,"

was prepared by Joel Wright of Warren County. This was in

1812, fifteen years after the founding of Franklinton whose sesqui-

centennial Columbus is celebrating in 1947. Events of this year

cause us to turn attention to this Warren County citizen who was

called out of retirement to plan the new state capital.

THE PIONEER

Joel Wright's career as a surveyor coincides with the pioneer

period of Ohio history. He made surveys in the Ohio Country the

year following the enactment of the famed Ordinance of 1787. As

a Marylander, he heard about the conflict in claims upon the

Northwest Territory by certain eastern states; Maryland had no

such claim upon this land.

English forces were still in control of Detroit when Wright

first camped with his chainmen in the unbroken forest of what is

now Ohio. Thomas Hutchins, first Geographer of the United

States, had established his "Geographer's Line" with its western

meridian as the base for all future surveys. Competent surveyors

were needed to bring order and form out of the wilderness. With

theodolite, compass, chain, ax, and notebook these pioneer survey-

ors for the first time used the rectangular system of survey in lay-

ing out the foundations of the new State. Wright was one of these

pioneers.

On his surveying trips to the Ohio Country, Wright visited

the first territorial capital at Marietta, the second state capital at

Zanesville, and from the third state capital at Chillicothe (which

had been also the first) received authority to lay out the fourth and

final seat of state government at Columbus. By that time he had

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288   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

made surveys in the larger valleys in southern Ohio, had purchased

land in the Little Miami Valley, and had lived in the State of his

adoption for seven years. It was no stranger to Ohio that the As-

sembly commissioned to plat the new capital in 1812.

FOREBEARS

John Wright and Elizabeth, his wife, were members of a

group of the Society of Friends (Quakers) who migrated to

northern Ireland from England, doubtless to escape the persecu-

tion often visited upon members of that faith at the time. They

sailed from Castleshane for Philadelphia sometime between 1737

and 1740. The year 1746 found this family living in Menallen,

not far from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. There their youngest

child, Joel, was born in I750.

Aron Wright Chapman has written concerning the youth of

Joel Wright.¹ He states that John Wright and his children are

frequently mentioned in the records of the Warrington Monthly

Meeting to which Menallen was attached. Where Joel obtained his

formal education is not known, but it is evident that he was well

educated for his time. He was proficient in mathematics and be-

came an excellent surveyor. He also taught school upon occasion,

both as a young man in Pennsylvania and after his retirement in

Warren County.

After the manner of Friends, Joel Wright secured certificates

from his local Meeting whenever he made an extended stay in

other parts of the country. In 1767 he secured one for the Fair-

fax Meeting, Pipe Creek, Maryland, and later one for Philadel-

phia. In 1771 he returned to Pipe Creek where he was married

the next year to Elizabeth Farquhar of that place. During the fol-

lowing 25 years they lived at Pipe Creek, with Joel often away on

long trips following his profession. Of the three boys and three

girls born to this family, the descendants of one son, Jonathan, are

now living. Despite his frequent absences, Joel was active in the

affairs of the Meeting; from 1794 to 1798 he was clerk or business

head. Elizabeth Wright died in 1805, and the next year Joel

Wright bought a large tract of land in Ohio where he made his

home the remaining 24 years of his life.

1 In his Aron and Mary Wright (New York, 1942).

JOEL WRIGHT                     289

TRIPS TO OHIO

His first contact with Ohio was probably in 1788, when he

made his first trip into the Muskingum Valley. The Ordinance of

1787 had been enacted to provide government for the Northwest

Territory, and eastern and southern people were beginning to move

into the fertile lands north of the Ohio River. Just how many

trips he made here is not known, but his papers show that he made

surveys in the Muskingum, Scioto, Little Miami, and Great Miami

valleys. In 1798 he was appointed by the Baltimore Yearly Meet-

ing to lead a small party to northern Ohio to arrange some dis-

puted matter with the Wyandot Indians. Chapman, in writing

of this, says that Wright kept a diary on this trip. The party

reached the Ohio River twenty days out of Baltimore.

Six days later they encamped near a Moravian Mission where

the services of an Indian guide, Joseph White-eyes, were secured

to lead them to Upper Sandusky for the conference with the

Indians.

On the return journey Wright became. ill, and the route was

changed so as to permit using a boat down the Scioto and up the

Ohio River. When, in 1806, he requested a certificate to the Miami

Monthly Meeting at Waynesville, Warren County, it was not as a

stranger come to take up land in an unknown country. His previ-

ous visits to Ohio had convinced him that the land between the

Miami rivers was the most favorable. In the summer of 1806 he

and Abijah O'Neal bought a tract of about 1,000 acres in the Little

Miami Valley near Waynesville, paying $1,500 for the land.

For seven years he was active in surveying and selling parcels

of his tract. During this period he became Warren County sur-

veyor, and there remain today many of his farm surveys written

in the fine hand observable on the plat of Columbus reproduced

here. In 1814 Wright's son Jonathan brought his wife and

younger children from Maryland to make their home in the Miami

Valley. His older children had already married and established

homes of their own in the East; hence two branches of Jonathan's

family developed because of geographical reasons.

Jonathan bought several hundred acres of land a few miles

west of his father's tract, about midway between the Great and

290 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Little Miami rivers at a point where many immigrant wagons were

crossing the fertile valley. Like his father, Jonathan was a

competent surveyor and platted the village of Springboro near one

corner of his tract. This was for many years an active Quaker

community. At the age of 64, Wright bought land near his son,

married an older sister of Jonathan's wife, and for the next fifteen

years lived in semi-retirement, occasionally surveying for his

neighbors and the county.

CITY PLANNING

Family letters of the early 1800's reveal that Wright was away

from home on different occasions in order to help survey and plat

Louisville, Dayton, and Columbus. Chapman speaks of a remark

Wright made to the effect that Dayton's Main Street must be wide

enough for a coach-and-four to turn around easily. The writer has

not pressed this investigation far enough to locate the original

platting he did for Louisville or Dayton, but he has encountered

some record of Wright's survey of 2,000 acres of land near the

Falls of the Ohio in June 1818.

There is no lack of record concerning another of the commis-

sions which Wright accepted after his removal to the Miami Val-

ley. By joint resolution February 20, 1812, of both houses of the

General Assembly sitting in Chillicothe he was authorized to plat

the state capital.² Under him was an engineer named Joseph Vance

of Franklin County who ran the lines, but the legislative enactment

shows that Wright's was the master hand; he decided the width

of the streets and alleys and the boundaries of the original munic-

ipality. He selected the square for the public buildings and the

lot for the penitentiary. The Assembly gave him authority to cut

and dispose of such timber as was necessary; for this task, he

secured the services of Jarvis Pike to clear the State House square

and enclose it in a stake-and-rider fence. Pike raised corn and

wheat on the lot for several years in return for his work.

The accompanying reproduction of a copy of Wright's orig-

inal plat of Columbus shows that his location of the State House

2 "Resolved by the General Assembly of the state of Ohio that Joel Wright of

Warren county be and he is hereby appointed director agreeably to the provisions of the

act entitled 'an act fixing and establishing the permanent and temporary seats of govern-

ment.'" Laws of Ohio, X, 202.

JOEL WRIGHT                      291

square remains, but a second penitentiary has been built several

squares north of the original site. The broad strip of land without

lots east of the State House square was reserved for sale by the

proprietors3 who had undertaken to furnish the land and buildings

to the State. Most of the original street names remain. On the

low-lying land bordering the Scioto River just below the con-

fluence of the Whetstone (Olentangy), there were no reserva-

tions made at the time of the original platting.

As required by law, Wright filed a report with the General

Assembly late in 1812, describing the progress of his work. In

closing he called attention to the fact that no provision had been

made for his compensation, and suggested that such provision be

made as the General Assembly deemed fair. In 1813 it was pro-

vided that Joel Wright, director of the town of Columbus, be

paid $503 for expenditures and services rendered.⁴ In view of the

progress made, he suggested that another be selected to super-

intend the work he had thus far advanced, and that he be allowed

to retire. William Ludlow was appointed the second director of

the town of Columbus in February 1815;5 Wright returned to his

family in Springboro.

SPRINGBORO

The Springboro community is testimony in many ways to the

character of Wright and his neighbors. Every deed to land sold

by Wright or his son contained a clause forbidding the sale or

manufacture of alcoholic beverages for a period of twenty years.

This was a real sacrifice to be asked of farmers in the West. It

was before the days of railroads and commercial meat-packing;

farmers turned to stills as an outlet for surplus corn. The Wrights,

father and son, were reportedly the first to hire harvest hands

without a ration of liquor; despite this their higher wage attracted

all of the help needed.

It was predominantly a Quaker community, and many of

the inhabitants must have shared these principles. Although it

had a population of no more than 350, the community supported

3 Alexander McLaughlin, John Kerr, Lyne Starling, and James Johnston.

4 Laws of Ohio, XI, 165.

5 Laws of Ohio, XIII, 335.

JOEL WRIGHT                      293

a public library and a debating society or "mock.legislature," and

even raised $70,000 with which to establish Miami Valley College.

Situated on an important east-west highway along which went

countless covered wagons headed for new lands of the Mississippi

Valley, there was reason for some rowdy and occasionally lawless

elements in pioneer towns. Springboro seems to have been an ex-

ception. In 1829 the Miami and Erie Canal came through Frank-

lin four miles west of the village; in the late 1830's the railroad

came through Waynesville, eight miles to the east. Springboro

lay between these vital routes. Inevitably the village lost vigor,

and the gentility of its earlier years did not endure until the

twentieth century. But Wright did not live to see its comparative

decline.

Throughout his long life he remained an active member of

the Society of Friends. Until he died in 1829, he wore the dress

of the Revolutionary period, long surtout with flap pockets, long

waistcoat and knee breeches, and low shoes trimmed with silver

buckles. The final Quaker touch was a broad-brimmed beaver hat.

No portrait remains of this pioneer surveyor. Throughout his

lifetime he would have none made, feeling, as did many others

among the Quakers, that it was "unseemly."

In 1825 Wright was prevailed upon by his son to make a

copy of the Columbus plat he had prepared as director of Colum-

bus. He made the 160-mile round trip to Columbus on horseback

through what was mostly unbroken forest. He was then 75 years

of age. This copy he gave to his son Jonathan, and in 1870 it

was given to his great-grandson Jesse Wright.  Early in the

present century it was borrowed by the Ohio State Archaeological

and Historical Society for a special exhibition in Columbus.

Later this copy was loaned to the Ohio State Library for exhibit,

officials of the State being unable to find their original plat. A

fire in the State House in 1852 may have destroyed it along with

other state records.

The copy was once offered by Jesse Wright to a younger

great-grandson of Joel, Dr. Jonathan Wright of Pleasantville,

New York; he did not accept it, saying that in his opinion it be-

longed in Ohio. In 1923 the Director of the New York Public

294 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Library borrowed this copy for the purpose of photographing it

for inclusion in the Library's Map Room; the copy was then re-

turned to Jesse Wright in Springboro. Charles E. Wright, Di-

rector of the Carnegie Library, Duquesne, Pennsylvania, probably

received this copy at the death of his father in 1928. It is thought

that the copy was lost when Charles Wright's residence was com-

pletely destroyed by fire in the early 1940's. The only known

copy of Joel Wright's plat of Columbus is, therefore, the photo-

graphic copy in the New York Public Library. Fortunately the

surveying instruments Joel Wright used during the years he sur-

veyed in Ohio have come into the possession of the Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Society, the gift of his descendants.