It’s long been rumored in the local history community that the 1812 founding of Columbus was based on a game of cards.

“There have been some charges of shenanigans,” said local historian Richard Barrett.

“There have been accusations that it wasn’t all above aboard, like taking people out drinking the night before the vote.”

But as for a high-stakes card game, in which the future of our city was bid like so many chips, it’s largely rumor.

“I don’t think we have good records of everything that happened in those years,” Barrett said.

It’s of no consequence, though. The real story is far more interesting.

“The politicking was intense” for the new state capital, wrote Charles Chester Cole in 2001’s A Fragile Capital.

Soon after statehood, Ohio politicians and landowners were fighting each other over where to locate the state capital. In February 1810, the General Assembly passed an act to locate it within 40 miles of the geographic “common centre” of the state.

The state capital meant wealth for businessmen, landowners and residents. “… every settlement in the State even remotely eligible to win the prize took timely steps to secure it,” wrote Alfred E. Lee in History of the City of Columbus, Capital of Ohio published in 1892. Delaware, Worthington, Zanesville, Lancaster and Newark were “early, ardent suitors.” Dublin was willing to throw in a distillery if the General Assembly chose them. The lobbying for votes began, potentially including drinking, cards, bets and other various “shenanigans.”

Lucas Sullivant, the largest landowner in Ohio (he had 41,000 acres by 1810), wanted the capital to be located in Franklinton, the town he founded in 1801. A special commission for the location of the new state capital rebuffed him, saying that Franklinton always flooded. But Sullivant wasn’t done fighting.

Sullivant’s brother-in-law and business partner Lyne Starling moved to Franklinton in 1805. Starling floated goods from Franklinton to New Orleans, and speculated on land on Wolf Ridge across the Scioto from Franklinton. “There is no agreeable society of any kind in this place, not a single girl worth a cent, none handsome, agreeable, rich or accomplished . . . they never speak of me without an ill-natured remark and never invite me to their parties,” Starling said in a letter to his sister. John Kerr, an Irish immigrant, moved to Franklinton in 1810 and made “extensive investments in land,” according to Lee. Alexander McLaughlin and James Johnston also speculated on land locally.

With Sullivant’s help, Starling, Kerr, McLaughlin and Johnston devised a plan to secure the capital on Wolf Ridge.

The land on Wolf Ridge – so called because there were wolves everywhere – was of relatively poor quality. Lizard Creek, the Cattail Swamp and numerous streams kept the land saturated. The only things on the east side of the Scioto were a dense forest, an Indian mound and John Brickell, a wild frontiersman who, wrote Lee, “for many years had been a captive among the Indians,” and who now wore animal skins and moccasins. “Just above [Brickell’s] cabin was the old Indian campground . . . where Indian feasts had been held, councils of the tribes deliberated, and horrible barbarities inflicted on unfortunate captives.”

Yet Sullivant, Starling, Kerr, McLaughlin and Johnston had a friend and ally in the state government: Joseph Foos.

Joe Foos was a judge and state senator from Franklinton. Foos owned the first ferry and the first hotel in Franklinton. His tavern was considered the “political headquarters of the settlement,” Lee wrote. And like his Franklinton compatriots, Foos knew he could make money from a local state capital. “Foos was hoping to gain financially if the land across the Scioto from Franklinton were selected” for the state capital, wrote Cole.

In their proposal to the Ohio General Assembly, Starling, Kerr, McLaughlin and Johnston said that they would give 10 acres for a capitol building, 10 acres for a penitentiary, build the jail and all the state offices at their own expense, and would give the state $100,000 if they failed to meet these obligations.

Other towns, politicians and landowners were making attractive offers, but none could compare.

“In the closing hours of the session a supreme effort was made in which Foos, Sullivant and other alert citizens of Franklinton took part, and when the test finally came, a decided majority was found on the side of Mr. Starling and his associates,” wrote Lee. It was Valentine’s Day – February 14, 1812.

Foos was elated, and suggested the capital be named after his boyhood hero, Christopher Columbus.

Lots in the new town went for sale on June 18, 1812. That same day, President James Madison declared war on Great Britain. The British were teaming up with Native American tribes.

Franklinton was on the frontier, and was still a wild place. Natives lived nearby. Men wore deerskin pants. The state was paying residents for wolf and panther scalps. A drunk guy killed a bear in town. “Women who were so fortunate as to have shoes,” wrote an early resident, “saved them for Sunday use and carried them as they walked along to church.”

State Representative (1812 and 1817) and eventual member of the Ohio Supreme Court Gustavus Swan wrote: “Goods were imported, mainly from Philadelphia, in wagons; and our exports consisting of horses, cattle, and hogs, carried themselves to market. The mails were brought to us once a week on horseback, if not prevented by high water. I feel safe in saying there was not in the county a chair for every two persons, not a knife and fork for every four. The proportion of the rough population was very large. With that class, to say that he to fight was to praise a man; and it was against him if he refused to drink. Aged persons and invalids, however, were respected and protected and could avoid drinking and fighting with impunity; but even they could not safely interfere to interrupt a fight.”

With the war underway, General William Henry Harrison, the head of the Northwest Army, was using Franklinton as his military headquarters. “Nothing here but the sound of war,” wrote Starling.

About 3,000 soldiers from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia arrived, and then moved to the front. Foos became a Brigadier General. Sarah Sullivant (Lucas’ wife) cared for sick soldiers encamped in her front yard. Locals sold goods to the army, and “nearly every man’s pocket was flushed,” said Lee.

Harrison met with 50 Native American chiefs in Franklinton, 4,600 hogs tramped through town to feed the troops, and local women ran off with soldiers. “My wife Nancy has eloped from my bed and board without any just cause,” wrote Daniel Ferguson in the Freeman’s Chronicle in 1814. Brooken Lynes wrote: “My wife, Maria, has left my bed and board and has since conducted herself in a very romantic and incorrigible manner.”

The war ended and, as folks were flush with cash, land in Columbus sold “readily and at good prices,” Lee wrote. Starling, Kerr, McLaughlin and Johnston became rich almost overnight. “Property all sells very high in Columbus,” wrote Betsy Deshler, whose husband David was one of the early landowners. (Her letters to friends back East provide a historical framework for the early days of Columbus.)

Sullivant bought land, and then built the first bridge across the river. Construction of the new city of Columbus had begun.

In 1815, Jarvis Pike was contracted to fell trees on Capitol Square. Deer came and fed on the leaves of the fallen timber. A flag was placed and a sapling elm tree planted where the new capitol building would be constructed. During the night, someone cut down the tree, and stole the flag. Replacements were installed. But it happened again. Residents assumed it was a closet Tory, and advertised a $100 bounty on the “perpetrator’s” head.

Workers then needed bricks for the new statehouse. They went to the old Indian mound nearby. “The bricks in it were made partly from bones – apparently human skeletons – dug up from a handsome, high mound that was removed from the corner of High and Mound Streets,” according to Cole. The ladies of Columbus sewed a carpet for the capitol building.

By the end of 1813, 300 residents had moved to Columbus. They came to the fledgling city from all over. “Our nearest neighbors are from Vermont, consequently Yankees,” wrote Deshler. “Our next neighbors are Virginians . . . the next, a German family.” The town was being “settled by people from all the other States,” wrote Robert McCoy, an early Columbus resident, “some being strictly Religious and some very wild.” Half the town’s population was children and teenagers, said Cole.

John Cotton of Massachusetts wrote of Columbus in 1815: “The streets are filled with stumps of trees and environed with woods, which give the town the appearance of having emerged from the forest. The people . . . do not make the most agreeable company.” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “In Ohio, everyone has come to make money.”

As early as 1813, hotels, called “taverns,” began springing up in Columbus. “The use of distilled liquors was very common, and every tavern had its licensed bar,” wrote Lee. Robert “Uncle Bob” Russell ran the Globe. Other early taverns included the White Horse Tavern, the City House, the Swan Tavern, the Red Lion, the Black Bear and the Golden Lamb.

At the corner of High and Rich streets, two brothers named Day, who were “ex-boatmen,” ran a bar “disguised as a grocery,” Lee wrote. The “grocery” became so “notorious for its brawls among Scioto River navigators” that it was nicknamed ‘The War Office.’ “The quarrelsome boatmen of the ‘War Office’” often needed the assistance of Columbus’ first lawyers.

Whisky and mint juleps were favorites among the city’s early residents.

“Mr. John M. Kerr [one of the city’s founders] says it was habitual with many of the most prominent citizens of the borough to enjoy their mint juleps on summer evenings seated on the sidewalk chairs or benches of the coffeehouses and taverns,” wrote Lee. “If a lady of their acquaintance chanced to pass by they rose and greeted her graciously each with his minted julep in his hand.”

Coffeehouses were for “gossip, refreshment and gaming,” according to Lee, and attracted professional gamblers, drinkers and people looking to socialize. Though “many of these establishments” opened in early Columbus, Young’s Coffeehouse, later the Eagle Coffeehouse, was by far the most popular. Starling owned the building. Early local resident Tom West was seen in Young’s “lying on the counter in an accustomed state of intoxication.”

Attached to Young’s was a public bathhouse – “probably the only one in the borough.” The water for the bathhouse, Lee wrote, “was pumped by a big black bear, chained to a treadmill in the backyard.” Once at Young’s, an actor named Trowbridge was teasing the bear. Just then, the bear broke free of its collar. Everyone scattered. Kerr tried to jump on a table to avoid the bear but hit his head and knocked himself out “for several minutes.” Once the bear was captured, “the loungers resumed their juleps and their jollity.”

Entertainer J.B. Gardiner brought an elephant, two camels and a jaguar to early Columbus. A “gang of wolves” chased one resident on horseback all the way to her home. Lucas Sullivant became president of Columbus’ first bank. And Kerr was elected to the borough’s first elected Council. “The first tax passed by the council was a fifty-cent levy on dogs,” according to Cole, which was then increased to a dollar a dog.

Joel Buttles and Dr. Lincoln Goodale became successful merchants. Starling, after a “grand jollification,” got so drunk on wine that he mistakenly put on another man’s pants. And in 1817, President James Monroe came to town wearing a tri-corner hat.

The new penitentiary, surrounded by a log structure and featuring whipping posts, was too small from the start. Polly Mifflin was in jail for stealing bank notes; 15 men were locked up for larceny; four for horse stealing; three for forgery; and two brothers were doing time for assault and battery, attempted robbery and attempted murder. “Only one prisoner had lived in Franklin County,” wrote Cole.

Though the new borough of Columbus was growing, a post-war economic collapse soon struck the country. To make life even more miserable, “the residents of the new little city were visited by a scourge of malarial disease,” according to Ruth Young White’s We Too Built Columbus (1936). “The undrained forests surrounding Columbus became filled with rank growth during the spring and summer months.”

Deshler buried several of her children who died from illness during this time. “There is not one, young or old, but that is of a dead yellow color. No kinds of business are going on except making coffins and digging graves.” Deshler herself died not long after.

The economic collapse forced early Columbus landowners into bankruptcy. “Single lots which had been held at two or three hundred dollars seven years before were sold for ten or twenty and some as low as even seven or eight dollars each,” wrote Lee.

Of the city’s original founders, Alexander McLaughlin, “one of the wealthiest men in the state,” was ruined, wrote Jacob Henry Studer in 1873’s Columbus Ohio: Its History, Resources, and Progress. James Johnston also went bankrupt. John Kerr – who was elected Columbus’ second mayor – “weathered the storm,” wrote Lee, but died in 1823, “leaving behind a young family to inherit, and unfortunately lose his large estate.”

Starling survived the economic collapse. He died at age 64, a bachelor, never finding an “agreeable” girl. Foos presented a plan to Congress to build a canal in Nicaragua that connected the Atlantic and Pacific. Sullivant lost his wife in 1814 and his daughter Sarah a month later, leaving him to raise his three sons, William, Lucas and Joseph, in the burgeoning city that he helped establish.

Robert Paschen is a freelance writer living in Columbus, Ohio. Each month throughout 2012, he will present (614) readers with narratives from Columbus’ 200-year history.