Westerville, OH news and local guide

The Blendon Young Men's Seminary was chartered there in 1839. The Church of the United Brethren in Christ bought it in 1846 and the next year renamed it Otterbein College, now Otterbein University. Westerville was platted by 1856 and incorporated in August 1858 with 275 people. Several homes were Underground Railroad stations, among them the home of Benjamin Russell Hanby, who came to study at Otterbein in 1849 and wrote "Darling Nelly Gray" and "Up on the Housetop." An 1859 ordinance banned alcohol sales, and in the "Westerville Whiskey Wars" townspeople twice blew up saloons opened by Henry Corbin, in 1875 and 1879. In 1909 the Anti-Saloon League moved its national headquarters from Washington to Westerville, and it mailed so much temperance literature, over 40 tons a month, that the "Dry Capital of the World" was the smallest town in the nation with a first-class post office. The League's building was given to the public library in 1973. Sources Wikipedia: Westerville, Ohio