Miami University-Oxford

be northwest of the Ohio River in the Miami Valley. The land was to be within the Symmes Purchase; landowner John Cleves Symmes purchased it from the government with the stipulation that he set aside land for an academy. Two days after Ohio achieved statehood in 1803, Congress granted one township to the Ohio General Assembly to build a college. Because all the townships within the Symmes Purchase had already been platted by that time, the General Assembly selected a township along Four Mile Creek in the Congress Lands West of Miami River during the summer of 1803. On February 2, 1809, the state legislature passed "An Act to Establish the Miami University", formally creating a board of trustees. Oxford, Ohio, was platted within the College Township in 1810.
The university temporarily halted construction due to the War of 1812. Cincinnati tried—and failed—to move Miami to the city in 1822. Miami created a grammar school in 1818 to teach frontier youth, but it was disbanded after five years. Though financed by …