Benjamin R. Symmes

Above: Illustration of Benjamin R. Symmes, from a photograph by Edward B. Rogers. Captain Benjamin Randolph Symmes was born in 1802. He was for a long time Captain of a company of militia and also Justice of the Peace. In 1840, he built a hotel on the southwestern corner of the section of land which had been the property of his father, three miles south of Hamilton, Ohio. To this locality he gave the name Symmes's Corner, whence the name of the village that was established there. In 1844, he moved to the "Corner" and kept the hotel himself for many years. He also served as postmaster of that village from that date to 1861. From the “Combination Atlas Map of Butler County, Ohio”, by L. H. Everts, 1875.