Major General Arthur St. Clair Click on picture for bigger view.

This city was set up in 1789 as the seat of the Northwest Territory, an area described, when established in 1787, as "everything west of the Allegheny Mountains and north of the Ohio River".

Lt Col Josiah Harmar, an Original Member of the Pennsylvania Society, and later Brigadier General of the US Army, and in charge of the Northwest Forces, took command of the newly built fort in Losantiville, Ohio on December 29th, 1789. He named it Fort Washington; it was on the site of what is now the corner of Third and Lawrence Streets, Cincinnati, Ohio.

The village of Losantiville was renamed Cincinnati in 1790, in honor of the Cincinnati Society, by the new governor of the Northwest Territories, Major General Arthur St. Clair. He was an Original Member of the Pennsylvania Society, and had been its first president from 1783-1789.

Captain David Zeigler, an Original Member of the Pennsylvania Society, and later US Army Major, was the first Mayor of Cincinnati, elected in 1802. He also held the post of Surveyor of the Port of Cincinnati from 1809 until his death in 1811.