Photo: Wood Old Homestead (Bob Evans Farm & Restaurant), circa 1820, Rio Grande. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. Photographed by wikipedia username:Vbofficial, 2007, own work, public domain. Accessed November, 2022.
The Gallia County Courthouse, is located at 18 Locust Street, Gallipolis, Ohio 45631 Phone: 740 446-4612.
Photo: Wood Old Homestead (Bob Evans Farm & Restaurant), circa 1820, Rio Grande. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. Photographed by wikipedia username:Vbofficial, 2007, own work, public domain. Accessed November, 2022.
TOWNS
On October 19, 1790, a party of French emigrants landed at the site of the present city of Gallipolis, Ohio. These emigrants were part of a number who had purchased land in the Ohio country from the Society of the Scioto in Paris. This Society had acquired the right of purchase in this part of America from Joel Barlow, agent of the Scioto Associates in America. They had contracted to buy from the United States a large tract of land in the Northwest Territory. Through the failure of the Society of the Scioto to meet its payments the Scioto Associates were unable to fulfill their obligations and the lands continued in possession of the American government. To satisfy the claims of the emigrants to whom the Society of the Scioto had given deeds for lands in the 18 ranges of townships—but which, upon the map furnished by Mr. Barlow, were located at and adjacent to the site of Gallipolis-the Scioto Associates contracted to buy from the Ohio Company the land represented by its shares, which had been forfeited for non-payment-about 200,000 acres. This land they were permitted to locate in the fourteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth ranges of townships, including the site of Gallipolis. Owing to the failure of the prin- cipal men among the Scioto Associates in the financial panic of 1792, they were unable to pay for this tract. This left the French without titles to any of their purchases. The Ohio Company was unable to complete the tract it had originally contracted for, but, by its settlement with Congress in 1792, it acquired the title to the land in the 14 and 15 ranges of townships, including Gallipolis. In 1795, through the efforts of Jean Gabriel Gewase, seconded by the leading men in the Ohio Company, a grant of 24,000 acres of land, in what is now Scioto county, was made to the French emigrants. In the same year the Ohio Company sold to them two fractional sections, about 900 acres of land, including the town site of Gallipolis, at $1.25 per acre. It also offered to each French settler at Gallipolis,' one hundred acres of land from the donation tract granted to it by Congress to be given to actual settlers. [ ohiohistory.org, accessed November, 2]
HISTORIC SITES