John Cleves Symmes - a colonel in the Revolutionary War, delegate to the Continental Congress, judge of the Northwest Territory, and developer of Southwest Ohio - died in Cincinnati on Feb. 26, 1814.

In 1788, Symmes, who had served as a justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, became one of three judges in charge of the Northwest Territory - which encompassed what are now the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota.

He created a company to buy land in the Northwest Territory between the Great Miami and Little Miami rivers. He asked to purchase 1 million acres from the federal government. In 1794, President George Washington granted a patent for 311,682 acres - for which Symmes and his partners paid about 67 cents an acre.

Symmes sold some land to the developers of what would become Cincinnati. He built a manor house for himself down the Ohio River in the village dubbed Cleves. Symmes had hoped his own land near the Great Miami would end up as the site of a Queen City of the West. He is buried at Congress Green, a tranquil spot in the village of North Bend that he had set aside as a cemetery.

Rebecca Goodman

E-mail rgoodman@enquirer.com