General James Findlay

James Findlay was an early Cincinnati settler and civic leader. In 1793, at the age of 23, he brought his new bride, Jane, to a small Ohio River settlement then called Losantiville. James and Jane were younger children of prominent families in Mercersburg, Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Permanent settlement in the basin along the Ohio River between the Great and Little Miami Rivers had become feasible fewer than four years prior to the Findlays' arrival when the new federal government built Fort Washington in late 1789. A year later, in 1790, the settlement's name was changed from Losantiville to Cincinnati.

Findlay and a partner, James Smith, built a log store near the Ohio River in 1793 and, a year or two later, moved operations to a larger general merchandise store around the corner from the original site. Findlay was among the early entrepreneurs and land speculators who both fueled and profited from young Cincinnati's rapid growth from a population of 1,000 in 1802 when it was incorporated to a population of more than 46,000 in 1840. By 1860, Cincinnati's population of 160,000 ranked it among the ten largest cities in the nation.

James Findlay's first years in Cincinnati coincided with a period of Indian warfare that concluded in 1795 with the Treaty of Greenville. Steamboats didn't arrive on the Ohio River until 1811, so merchandise for Findlay's growing retail business was packed in from the east by horse or brought down river by boat, at great peril prior to the cessation of hostilities. During the summer of 1794, Findlay himself was attacked and nearly killed near Portsmouth, Ohio and a wagon and driver from his store were lost in an attack while delivering supplies to Fort Hamilton, north of Cincinnati.

James Findlay served as Mayor of Cincinnati in 1805 and 1810. He and twenty-four other citizens established a public library in Cincinnati in 1802. During the War of 1812 he commanded a regiment near Detroit, built a fort near what later became Findlay, Ohio, and was taken prisoner by British troops. Following the war, he was elected to the U.S Congress and served as a Major General of the State Militia's First Division. Findlay served in Congress with his brothers William and John, each of whom represented Pennsylvania districts, one of only two times in American history that three siblings served simultaneously. (William Findlay was also elected a United States Senator and governor of Pennsylvania.)

With profits from his successful retail business, James Findlay purchased large tracts of wooded land immediately north of the Cincinnati city line in what was then called The Northern Liberties. Findlay's forested property become known as "Findlay's Woods." Hoping to develop the area, Findlay and Jepthah Garrard recorded a Northern Liberties town plat on June 3, 1833. The plat established many streets that exist today (Findlay, Green, Race, and Elm), as well as the locations of some streets west of Vine Street that have since been renamed (Elder, Republic, McMicken). The plat also established, in an open area used by local farmers as a market, a location for a farmers market and general store along what became Elder Street.

General James Findlay died in 1835 before the market and store could be built. His widow, Jane Irwin Findlay, remained a prominent citizen of Cincinnati. In 1840, she moved briefly to the White House in Washington, D.C. where she assisted her niece, Jane Irwin, President William Henry Harrison's daughter in law. The newly elected President had asked Mrs. Irwin to stand in as the nation's official First Lady because his wife was too ill to accompany him to Washington. The assignment proved short lived because President Harrison himself died of an illness in 1841 shortly after taking office. Mrs. Findlay returned to Cincinnati, where she died in 1851. She and General James Findlay are buried in Spring Grove Cemetary.

After Mrs. Findlay's death, executors of the Findlay estate donated the parcel identified as a market on the Northern Liberties town plat to the City of Cincinnati, stipulating that it be used to build a public market named for and commemorating General Findlay.

A Brief History Of Cincinnati's Findlay Market

The Northern Liberties and Over-the-Rhine

Cincinnati's Public Markets

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General James Findlay

Passengers on the Miami-Erie Canal