a compendium of facts about Ohio history
by Dan Chabek
Our "Buckeye" nickname
But that's only partly the reason. We have to go back to the feverish presidential campaign of 1840 for the rest of it.
William Henry Harrison, a Virginia-born Ohioan and military hero, was a candidate for the White House, but his opponents commented that he was better suited to sit in a log cabin and drink hard cider.
Some of Harrison's leading supporters, who were experts in promotional know-how, decided to turn into a positive reference what was supposed to be a negative one.
They dubbed him "the log cabin candidate," and chose as his campaign emblem a log cabin made of buckeye timbers, with a long string of buckeyes decorating its walls. Furthermore, in parades, his backers walked with buckeye canes and rolled whisky barrels.
The campaign gimmicks were successful. "Old Tippecanoe," as Harrison was often called, beat President Martin Van Buren in the latter's bid for re-election, and thereafter the buckeye was closely associated with the state of Ohio.
The name itself is of native origin. Because the markings on the nut resembled the eye of a buck, the Indians called it "hetuck" or "buckeye."
The name Ohio, meanwhile, can be traced to an Indian word meaning "great" and was first given to the historic river that borders our state.
© 1997 Dan Chabek
Editor's note: Early uses of the term “buckeye” applied to a person are attributed to the era of General Rufus Putnam and the Ohio Company’s landing at the Muskingum and Ohio where Marietta was founded.
S.P. Hildreth,
pioneer historian of Marietta, tells of the 1788 use of Hetuck (big
buckeye)
as a nickname for a Colonel Ebenezer Sproat — the first known application
— but adds that there is no evidence the term continued to be used,
or that it became a “fixed and accepted soubriquet of the State
and people until more than half a century afterwards.”
- “Why is Ohio Called the Buckeye State?” An address by Farrar,
William M., Ohio History 2:1 (June 1888), pp.174-9.
A footnote
to a recounting of the pioneer landing mentions the “traditionally
asserted” story of a member of the landing party and winner of a
pioneer tree-chopping contest, Captain Daniel Davis. Generations of the
Davis family have preserved accounts of this story and propose it as an
explanation for the “fact that Ohio is called ‘the Buckeye
state’ and its people ‘Buckeyes.’”
- Schroeder, Ralph Lietz History of Washington County, Ohio, with illustrations
and biographical sketches. Knightstown, Ind.: Bookmark, 1976 (Reprint
of the edition published by H. Z. Williams & Bro., 1881), p. 47.
Ohio Buckeye from What Tree is It
Buckeye Trees in Ohio Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry - Information and Education
Ohio Buckeye from the Minnesota Power Company Treebook.
Buckeye Nuts - the "lucky charms" attributed to the buckeye, from the The Lucky W Amulet Archive
RootsWeb family history record of Capt. Daniel Davis; Capt. Daniel Davis