Ebenezer Zane

Complicating matters, native Americans captured William Zane and several of his young sons after they had begun to farm along the south branch of the Potomac River, and although some were eventually taken to Detroit and ransomed, his son Isaac remained a captive of the Wyandot for more than a decade, married a native American, and would have Zanesfield, Ohio, named in his honor.

To the distress of many settlers in western Virginia, the British agreed in the 1763 treaty ending the conflict to prohibit further settlement west of the Appalachian divide.

[2] In 1774, Zane began his formal military career under British rule, as a disbursing officer during Dunmore's War against Native Americans.

His sister Elizabeth became celebrated for her courage in leaving the fort to retrieve a badly needed keg of gunpowder and sprinting back safely under a hail of gunfire.

In 1788, Ohio County voters also elected Ebenezer Zane as one of their delegates to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, where he and voted in favor of ratification of the United States Constitution.

However, the 1799 election was very close, and a court challenge unseated Zane and Benjamin Biggs in favor of one of the incumbents, William McKinley and John Morgan.

[7] Following the war, in May 1796, Zane obtained permission and funds from the United States Congress to build a road through the Northwest Territory.

In exchange for his work (and that of his brother Jonathan, son-in-law John McIntyre and native guide Tomepomehala), Congress granted Zane three large tracts of land—where the road crossed the Muskingum, Hocking, and Scioto rivers.

Although the road was a rudimentary path and at first suitable only for travel by foot or horseback (not by wagon), the state of Ohio undertook improvements in the early 19th century.