Bryan City Hall is located at 1399 East High Street, Bryan, OH 43506.
Phone: 419‑633‑6000.
Neighborhoods
Beginnings [1]
At the session of the Ohio General Assembly, which convened on the first Monday of December, 1839, three Commissioners were appointed, by a joint resolution, to review and permanently locate the seats of justice of Williams and Lucas Counties. These Commissioners were Joseph Burns, of Coshocton; James Culbertson, of Perry, and Joseph McCutchen, of Crawford. Since the organization of Williams County, the seat of justice had been at Defiance; but that place, geographically, was a border town, and difficult and expensive of approach to the growing population of the interior, and all the northern, and most of the eastern and western townships. The location chosen was a central one. Towns, however, several years previously, had commenced building up at Williams Center and Pulaski, and both were strong competitors for the county seat. John A. Byran, of Columbus, then Auditor of State, had donated the ground to the county in consideration that the seat of justice be permanently established upon it; and the first business, after the site had been fixed, was to secure a civil engineer to survey and plat the town, and Miller Arrowsmith was employed for this work. The surveyor and assistants, with a foreknowledge that they would have no accommodation for bed and board at the place, appeared on the ground with a supply of tents and provisions, and entered upon their duties. After the completion of the survey, Mr. Arrowsmith named the town Bryan, in honor of its founder. The following explanatory notes and references appear upon the margin of the plat: "Situated on the southwest quarter of Section 17, Town 6 north, Range 8 east, in the County of Williams and State of Ohio. The lots are four rods wide, and eight roads long. A stone is planted on the northeastern corner of the public square. The streets cross at right angles, and Main and High streets are 100 feet wide, and all other streets sixty-six feet wide. The alleys are twenty feet wide. The public square, together with the two lots incorporated within the square, are donated to the county for public buildings by the proprietors of the town—the numbers of the two lots being left blank on the plat. John A. Bryan, for himself, and as agent and attorney for the American Land Company.