Westerville Early History
Westerville is a city in Delaware and Franklin counties located in the state of Ohio. It’s one of the the largest suburbs of Columbus.
The land of Westerville was settled first around 1810 by Matthew, Peter, and William Westervelt, Dutch settlers who migrated from New York. The Westervelts donated land in order to construct a Methodist church in 1836, and the land settlement was subsequently named in the family name’s honor. The Blendon Young Men’s Seminary was chartered in 1839, and Matthew Westervelt became one of its first trustees. The seminary was bought by the Church of the United Brethren in Christ in 1846, and a year later, the seminary was reformed and renamed Otterbein University (after the church’s founder Philip William Otterbein). Its now the private Otterbein College.
Westerville was officially incorporated in August of 1858, with a town population of 275.
Some notable Westerville history:
During the Antebellum era, several of Westerville’s homes were stations on the Underground Railroad, and one of the most well known is the Hanby House, located one block from Otterbein college. That home is currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and now functions as a museum owned by the Ohio Historical Society and managed by the Westerville Historical Society.
Westerville was at one time known as the Dry Capital of the World. During prohibition, there were escalating tensions between pro and anti-temperance forces which lead to the “Westerville Whiskey Wars”. Often, anti-temperance townfolks would take matters into their own hands, and blew up establishments that sold alcohol with gunpowder.
When the U.S. Constitution’s Eighteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920 supporting temperance, over 40 tons of mail in the form of leaflets was sent out by the League (headquartered in Westerville and at the forefront of the Prohibition movement) – so much mail that Westerville became smallest town in the nation to have a first class post office. Even after Prohibition ended, Westerville remained dry for most of the twentieth century.
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