Transcription contributed by Arne H Trelvik 2 June, 2003

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WARREN COUNTY was established by an act of the first General Assembly of the State of Ohio, passed March 24, 1803, and named at the same time in honor of the first great martyr in the cause of American independence. The act creating the county took effect May 1, 1803, and with this date the history of the county, as a civil division, begins.

When Ohio became a State, but nine counties had been formed within its limits by proclamation of the Territorial Governor, and one of the first duties of the first State Legislature, which met at Chillicothe March 1, 1803, was the creation of new counties. Out of the large territory of Hamilton County, as it then existed, Warren, Butler and Montgomery Counties were formed by one act, and by the same act the county of Greene was formed out of Hamilton and Ross.

In the boundaries of Warren County, the mouth of the O’Bannon is the only point fixed by nature. The northern boundary of Clermont, which was a due east line from the mouth of the O’Bannon, had already been established, and was made the southern boundary of Warren, east of the Little Miami. The county, at its organization, extended eastward to the present site of Wilmington, and included no territory west of the Great Miami. In 1810, when Clinton County was formed, its western boundary was decreed to be so fixed as to leave to Warren a constitutional area of 400 square miles. On January 30, 1815, the territory of our county west of the Great Miami was detached from Butler and attached to Warren, and at the same time, eleven square miles of this county extending along its eastern border – being a narrow strip about half a mile in width – were attached to Clinton.

The territory thus formed into Warren County was made up of parts of three different tracts of lands, deriving their designations from the manner in which they were transferred to the occupants from the Government – first, the Virginia Military Lands, including all of the county east of the Little Miami; second, Symmes’ Purchase, including that portion west of the Little Mimi and south of an east-and-west line passing about a mile north of Lebanon; and third, Congress Lands, or lands transferred immediately to the occupants by the officers of the Government, comprising the remainder of the county.