Galion ( GAL yən) is a city in Crawford, Morrow, and Richland counties in the U.S. state of Ohio. The population was 10,453 at the 2020 census. Galion is the second largest city in Crawford County after Bucyrus.
The Crawford County portion of Galion is part of the Bucyrus micropolitan statistical area. The small portion of the city that is located in Richland County is part of the Mansfield metropolitan area, while the portion extending into Morrow County is considered part of the Columbus, Ohio metropolitan area.
At a Glance
- Counties: Crawford County, Richland County and Morrow County
- State: Ohio
History of Galion
The region was first inhabited by Native American tribes up until the first settlers, Benjamin Leveridge and his two sons, arrived in 1817. In 1820, William Hosford and his two sons, Asa and Horace, settled on land outside of the area. It was not until Colonel James Kilbourne decided to "lay out a town half way between Columbus and the Lakes" that the crossroads of Portland and Main street were settled by the Hosford family. This crossing was known by various names including: Moccasin, Horseshoe, Hard Scrabble, Spang Town, Hosfords and Goshen. Galion was laid out in 1831. However, in 1824 the town petitioned for a post office using the name Goshen and later changed to Galion by the postmaster general, John McLean, due to a town already being named Goshen in Ohio. The etymology of the name Galion is uncertain. A post office called Galion has been in operation since 1825.
Asa Hosford is considered the "Father of Galion" due to his work as a state legislator in which he did work to get a rail line through the area that was completed in 1851.
On April 30, 1882, in Galion, Ohio, a mob of around 2,000 people took Frank Fisher, an African American man accused of raping a white woman, from the town jail and lynched him. The mob hanged Fisher in broad daylight despite efforts by local authorities to intervene. The event was widely covered in newspapers at the time and is recognized as a tragic episode in Galion’s history.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Galion, Ohio, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.