The first meetinghouse of the Columbia Baptist Church, the earliest Baptist church in Ohio, stood on this site. In 1787, Captain Benjamin Stites traveled down the Ohio River with supplies to assist new settlements in Kentucky, crossed into this area, and found land he believed suited for homesteaders. He returned in the late fall of 1788 with a few dozen people, including Judge John Cleves Symmes, from whom he would secure 10,000 acres that later became Columbia. Six Baptists were among the travelers, and with the help of Reverend Stephen Gano the Columbia Baptist Church was constituted on January 20, 1790. Its nine charter members were Benjamin Davis, Mary Davis, John Ferris, Elizabeth Ferris, John S. Gano, Jonah Reynolds, Amy Reynolds, Thomas C. Wade, and Deacon Isaac Ferris. The church gained its first full-time minister in May 1791, when Elder John Smith assumed the role, and under his leadership a meetinghouse was built in the spring of 1793. Despite perils and hardships, the congregation spread branch churches into surrounding places. In 1795, some members joined a church on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. In 1797, other groups formed the Little Miami Island Church and a church on Carpenter’s Run, and additional members settled on Clear Creek, Turtle Creek, and Little Prairie, present-day Middletown, where churches were also established; the early Staunton Church also traced its origins to Columbia. The Columbia church held the first Baptist ordination service in the Northwest Territory when Daniel Clarke was ordained in September 1792 by Dr. John Gano and Elder John Smith. In 1808, the Old Columbia Baptist Church moved its place of worship about two miles north to Duck Creek and became known as the Duck Creek Baptist Church. Because of its early arrival and its outward branching through church plants, the Columbia Baptist Church strongly influenced the region for many generations. Stephen Gano, a physician and Baptist minister who lived from 1762 to 1828, was the son of John Gano and the brother of charter member John S. Gano; he helped organize the Columbia Baptist Church and preached there for a time before John Smith became pastor. John Gano, who lived from 1727 to 1804, was a key Baptist leader who helped found several churches, raised his sons to advance the Baptist cause into the West, and officiated the first ordination service west of the Appalachians at this church in September 1792. John Smith, who lived from 1735 to 1824, had been born and educated in Virginia, moved to western Pennsylvania, joined the Cheat River Baptist Church in 1788, was ordained there, became its pastor in 1790, and arrived here in 1791 as the first full-time pastor of Columbia Baptist Church. He later pastored the Miami Island Baptist Church and was known as a trader, miller, speculator, merchant, and Baptist minister. He purchased thousands of acres, was by 1796 the second highest taxpayer in Columbia Township after Benjamin Stites, and owned the second store built in Columbia. He served in the first Territorial Assembly in 1798, pressed for Ohio statehood, and after Ohio became a state in 1803 served as Ohio’s first U.S. senator from 1803 to 1808, becoming a friend and advisor to President Thomas Jefferson. John Smith died on July 21, 1824, and is buried in Louisiana.