Cleves

• Anna Harrison1775-1864 · tied to this placeNorth Bend pioneer's daughter and wife of William Henry Harrison who was first…

How Cleves began

Cleves lies on the Ohio River plain between the Great Miami and the north bend of the Ohio, on the ground Judge John Cleves Symmes meant for his City of Miami. Symmes lived here until he died in 1814; General William Henry Harrison, his son-in-law, laid out the town as Clevestown and recorded the plat on November 7, 1818. It was named for the Cleves family of Symmes's mother, was incorporated in 1875, and had 836 residents in 1880. In 1843 a mob here broke up an anti-slavery meeting at the Presbyterian church. Its population reached 3,414 in 2020.

Platted November 7, 1818, incorporated March 17, 1875, by General William Henry Harrison laid out Clevestown on land from the Symmes Purchase (Wikipedia credits Symmes, who died in 1814).

Where the name comes from

The 1881 county history says Cleves, originally called Clevestown, was named, like Symmes's own given name, for the maternal (Cleves) branch of the Symmes family, from whom the judge and many others derived part of their names.

Before the town

Ford's 1881 county history says earthworks of the vanished mound-building people are found numerously at the mouth of the Great Miami, about Cleves and for miles along the river banks above and below Colerain, and Judge Force thought a line of fortifications ran along the Great Miami from its mouth to Piqua; the Conrad Mound Archeological Site southwest of the village is a documented prehistoric earthwork. Cleves sits within the Symmes Purchase, land that had been Miami and Shawnee territory before the Treaty of Greenville (1795). No Native town is recorded in Cleves itself.

Nations recorded here: Miami, Shawnee.

• Conrad Mound Archeological Site (mound) — Off Rittenhouse Road, southwest of Cleves, Hamilton County, not specified in sources consulted (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1788 — John Cleves Symmes purchases the tract between the Great and Little Miami rivers from the Continental Congress, the Symmes Purchase that later includes the Cleves site.
2. 1789-02 — Judge John Cleves Symmes lands his colony at the north bend of the Ohio and plans the "City of Miami" on the neck of land that later holds North Bend and Cleves.
3. 1795-11 — William Henry Harrison marries Anna Symmes; by tradition the couple slipped away to the house of Dr. Stephenwood, a justice of the peace near the later site of Cleves, because Symmes opposed the match.
4. 1811-03 — Judge Symmes's stone mansion on the edge of the future Cleves burns, probably by arson; a neighbour named Hart is tried and acquitted.
5. 1814-02-26 — Symmes dies in Cincinnati and is buried at North Bend, four years before Cleves is platted.
6. 1818-11-07 — General William Henry Harrison lays out Clevestown, named for the Cleves family of Symmes's mother, and the plat is recorded on this date.
7. 1830 — Cleves has 110 inhabitants.
8. 1836 — Ebenezer Argo, shoemaker, opens a shop in Cleves; after 1851 he deals in groceries and hardware and is a trustee and elder of the Presbyterian church.
9. 1843-04 — Anti-slavery speakers Samuel Lewis, Jonathan Blanchard and Thomas Morris, invited by the Presbyterian pastor Rev. Mr. Scofield and most of his flock, are barred from the Cleves meeting house by a mob and hold their convention in the road, then at the Berea church a mile away.
10. 1875-03-17 — Cleves is incorporated for general purposes; its corporate limits take in 595 acres.
11. 1880 — The village's population is recorded at 836.
12. 2000 — The census counts 2,790 residents in Cleves.
13. 2010 — The census counts 3,234 residents in Cleves.
14. 2020 — Cleves reaches its recorded population peak of 3,414.

Stories

A prayer in the road at Cleves

In the spring of 1843 the pastor of the Cleves Presbyterian church, Rev. Mr. Scofield, and most of his flock called a meeting for free discussion of slavery, with Samuel Lewis, Jonathan Blanchard and Senator Thomas Morris as speakers. Relatives of General Harrison objected, a crowd gathered, and when the speakers, who had come down from Cincinnati with students of Lane Seminary, reached the church the doors were barred. The convention met in the road in front, where Lewis knelt and offered a prayer; one of the rioters said he never forgot it. At the invitation of an elder, Richard Hughes, the meeting moved to the Berea church a mile away and sat two days. The mob smashed the Cleves meeting-house windows, mobbed the pastor's house, threw his buggy into the canal and shaved the tail of his horse. The account is from the lives of Thomas Morris and Samuel Lewis, written by their sons and quoted in the 1881 county history.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Ohio River intake at the plant's riverfront on Kellogg Ave in the California neighborhood, east Cincinnati The water here

• Cincinnati Public Water System64% of residentsOhio River (Miller Plant, ~88%) plus Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer wells (~12%)
• Cleves Village36% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Public schools (3)

Public libraries (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 2 of 5 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 3.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked. The county's results on file run through 2025-11-04; later elections are not loaded yet.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2026-02-24

Statewide question: State Issue 3: Voter ID

Local questions for Cleves, Hamilton County and its school district:

• Hamilton County: Renews and increases a 5.61-mill property tax levy for the care & placement of children & children services of Hamilton County for 4 years, beginning in 2026.

Races, candidates and every question for an address: your ballot. County offices and judges are on your county board's sample ballot.

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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