Celina was founded and named by James W. Riley in 1834. As a young man, he had become a captain of merchant ships, and with that nautical background he came to the Ohio territory as a surveyor. He originated the name Celina while visiting the state of New York, where the town of Selina impressed him as a pleasant town in a similar setting; the S was changed to a C to avoid confusion of the post offices. Shortly after Celina's founding, its industry included a steam sawmill erected to saw lumber for the embankment of the reservoir and for a courthouse, and Riley owned a store. When the town had only 15 families, it already had two hotels, one at Sugar and Warren Streets and a two-story structure at Main and Warren Streets, and Dr. Fulton had his office at the northwest corner of Fayette and Ash Streets. Riley's brother described the town by saying that the trees stood in all their native grandeur and water was everywhere. Riley sponsored a chopping bee in which more than seventy woodsmen cleared all the trees in the plat beginning at Market and Buckeye Streets. One white oak near Warren and Sugar Street was notable for its majestic size, measuring 8 1/2 feet across and sixty feet to its first limb. This clearing allowed the ground to dry and greatly improved living conditions. Celina's first newspaper was established in 1848, its first school district was established in 1859, and before 1900 its manufacturing businesses included two barrow stave factories, a woolen mill, three planing mills, a carriage works, two wagon works, a marble works, a flour mill, a grain elevator, a tannery, and numerous commercial businesses.