David McCullough's The Pioneers [...]Rufus Putnam took the lead at Chillicothe in the signing of a charter to establish a state university at the location first surveyed on a series of hills overlooking the Hocking River. With the same brightly optimistic spirit that had inspired Putnam and others to call Marietta a “city,” the little college town that was to emerge in the wilderness by the Hocking would be called Athens, and while it was Manasseh Cutler’s idea to name the new institution the “American University,” the name chosen was Ohio University […] Meantime, significant changes had taken place in Marietta. Arthur St. Clair had decided to move the office of the territory governor farther west, down the Ohio, to a village known as Losantiville, meaning “town located opposite the mouth of the Licking,” a name St. Clair promptly changed to Cincinnati in honor of the famous Revolutionary officers’ society […] By 1815 Ohio’s population was approximately 500,000 and still growing. Cincinnati had become the fastest-growing city in America. But still more of the settlers traveling the river were bound for the territory beyond. In 1816, with a population of about 65,000, Indiana would become a state. In 1818 Illinois, too, would become a state, its population having reached approximately 35,000[ …] Dickens was astonished and delighted to find Cincinnati “beautiful . . . cheerful, thriving, and animated. I have not often seen a place that commends itself so favorably and pleasantly to a stranger at first glance as this does.” He found Cincinnatians “intelligent, courteous, and agreeable,” and, “with good reason,” were proud of their city. He was amazed to learn that the population had reached 50,000, and that the city was rightly famous for its free schools.